f BX 



THE 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY 

OF 



METHODISM 



BY 



BISHOP E. MS MARVIN, 

Of the M. E. Church, South. 



if 



J.0 



ST. LOUIS: 
Logan D. Dameron, Agent, 
ADVOCATE PUBLISHING HOUSE. 
1878. 




mm 



THE LIBRARY 

Of CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON j 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, by 
LOGAN D. DAMEROX, AGENT, 
in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction 5 

CHAPTER I. 

The Danger 9 

CHAPTER H. 

The Danger — Continued 20 

CHAPTER III. 
The Danger — Continued 29 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Danger—Aggravated.. 38 

CHAPTER Y. 

Conservatism 46 

CHAPTER VI. 
Creeds 51 

CHAPTER VII. 
Speculation 65 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Substance of Christian Doctrine 72 

CHAPTER IX. 
Depravity 78 

CHAPTER X. 

Depravity — Continued 88 



4 CONTENTS CONTINUED . 

CHAPTER XL 
Depravity — Free Will 97 

CHAPTER XH. 
Depravity — Little Children 105 

CHAPTER XIH. 
Little Children — Continued 114 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Predicates of Methodist Doctrine 123 

CHAPTER XV. 
Conclusive 128 



INTRODUCTION. 



The publisher of " Marvin's Doctrinal Integrity of 
Methodism" requests me to write an " Introduction " to the 
book. With this request I the more readily comply because of 
my long and intimate personal relations with, and my very 
great esteem for, the lamented author; and also because I be- 
lieve the book to be a very valuable contribution to the litera- 
ture of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. 

This work first appeared in the form of a series of articles 
published in the St. Louis Christian Advocate in the year 1871 ; 
the series commencing July 19th and ending October 25th. 
From the work itself it is very evident that the author intended 
to produce a thorough and exhaustive treatise of the subject 
which he had in hand, and the publisher has certainly rendered 
an important service to the church by casting it in its pres- 
ent permanent form. That series of articles was too valuable 
to pass away with the ephemeral existence of a mere weekly 
newspaper publication. The subject had taken very deep hold 
upon the Bishop's mind, and had time permitted he desired to 
have it treated still more exhaustively. In the last of the series 
he says: "This series of articles must now come to a close 
. short of the point which I had at one time in view. My tour of 
Conferences is at hand, and I shall have no opportunity for 



6 INTRODUCTION CONTINUED . 

writing except in a very desultory way. It was my purpose to 
give two or three articles on the work of the Spirit, but the 
very brief treatment of the most important doctrines connected 
with it given in the last number must suffice. The doctrine of 
justification by faith, also, I purposed to write of somewhat at 
length. Particularly, I intended to treat of the right of the 
church to adopt and enforce a 4 creed 5 embodying vital doc- 
trines of the Christian faith. But imperative duties forbid." 

Thousands, who read with interest and profit the work as it 
first appeared in the Advocate, will now hail it in its present 
permanent form. For although our departed Bishop has not 
said to us all that he desired to say on the subject, yet what he 
has said is wonderfully adapted to the exigency of the times 
and will be of invaluable service especially to our young preach- 
ers in aiding them to resist the tide of error and unbelief that is 
sweeping over the land, and to maintain the Doctrinal Integrity 
of Methodism. The shifts and turns of modern infidelity and 
the pretended demonstrations of skeptical science are here met 
and exposed. The ancient landmarks of sonnd doctrine which 
are becoming increasingly obscure under the accumulated rub- 
bish of moderd opinion, are clearly defined and strongly af- 
firmed. 

I most heartily and earnestly commend the work to all 
lovers of sound doctrine. 

W. M. RUSH. 

Boonville, Mo., April 24, 1878, 



i 



THE 



DOCTRINAL INTEGEITT OF METHODISM. 



Up to the spring of 1850 I had seen but a 
very few of the distinguished men of the Church. 
The reputation of such men as Bascom, Smith, 
Winans, Kavanaugh, and the Pierces, had excited 
a romantic interest in me. I was, therefore, quite 
excited with the expectation of visiting the General 
Conference in St. Louis that year. I had but two 
or three days to spend, but during that short time 
I saw and heard all that one man could. 

The most impressive thing I heard was Dr. W. 
A. Smith's great speech on Lay Representation, a 
measure which he proposed and advocated at that 
time. To what extent that speech influenced the 
action of the Church, in 1866, I do not know. But 
there was a fact stated in it that I had not thought 
of before. I saw at once that it was a fact of great 
significance. It was this : That there had not been 



10 DOCTTLINAL INTEGRITY OF ^METHODISM. 

a doctrinal schism in the Methodist Church. Its 
organic division and internal troubles, both in Eng- 
land and America, had originated from other causes. 
They had originated either from considerations of 
convenience, growing out of geographical relations, 
or from opposition to the form of government. In 
no case had there been the slightest trouble about 
doctrine. 

Nor did the Doctor dread any trouble about our 
doctrine. He feared that if we failed to introduce 
lay representation into the General Conference, the 
time would come when there would be disaffection 
on that ground. But he anticipated schism from no 
other cause. 

His views seemed eminently reasonable to me. 
Evangelical Arminianism appeared so thoroughly 
Scriptural and rational that I could not see that any 
vital differences were likely to arise. As against 
Calvinism, it asserts the universality of the Attorn- 
ment and a conditional election, making the salvation 
of every man possible. As against the Pelagians, it 
asserts that " Original sin standeth not in the follow- 
ing of Adam, but is the corruption of the nature of 
every man that naturally is engendered of the off- 
spring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from 
original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined 
to evil, and that continually." As against the Uni- 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 11 

versalists, it maintains the truth of our Savior's 
declaration, that the wicked 6 6 shall go away into 
everlasting punishment." As against Unitarians 
and Socinians, it proclaims the divinity of Christ 
and the doctrine of the Trinity, with the cognate 
doctrines of the expiatory and vicarious sacrifice of 
Christ, with the correlative postulate, the punitive 
justice of the Divine administration. As against 
philosophy, falsely so-called, it asserts the literal 
truth of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, 
and everlasting life after death. As against all Rit- 
ualists, it holds the simplicity and spirituality of 
worship, and the subjective reality of the new birth. 

All this is, to my mind, so plainly taught in Holy 
Scriptures, and withal so consonant with reason, and 
so satisfactory to the Christian conscience, that I am 
slow to believe that any heretical movement can be- 
come mischievous among us. I can not think that 
we are in danger of losing 6 6 the form of sound 
words," or suffering any schism on this account. 

Yet, for some reasons, I am led to look to the 
foundations now with some degree of solicitude. 
We are living at a critical juncture of the world's 
history. There are times when the current of affairs 
becomes sluggish, and for a few generations there 
is scarcely a perceptible change. Then again, all at 
once, new ideas and new social forces start into ac- 



12 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

tivity, and in ten years' time such changes take place 
that the world scarcely knows itself. Such was the 
case in Germany in Luther's time, and in England 
under Henry VIII. It would not be difficult to 
point out many other such epochs in the different 
countries and ages. No doubt that during the dull, 
quiescent periods things do move and get into new 
adjustments, but are so held in check by conserva- 
tive obstructions that no decided progress is appa- 
rent. But at last the obstructed current swells to a 
volume too heavy for the conservative barriers that 
repress it. When they break before it, woe to any- 
thing that stands in the way of its headlong plunge. 

I believe that in Christendom the movement of 
the ages is a true progress. But the channel is so 
tortuous and so gorged in places with the debris of 
the past, and with accumulations of falsehood and 
prejudice and depravity, that many times the current 
is forced backward, and so the movement is not al- 
ways progress. There has been, oftentimes, alas for 
us, retrogression instead. Oftentimes, again, the 
stream overflows and, perforce, digs new channels 
for itself. In that case many a fair inheritance is 
swept away. Such are the hard conditions under 
which humanity, ignorant and depraved as it is, is 
able to go forward to better things, even with the 
help of the Incarnate Savior. 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 13 

If my observation nas not deceived me, we are 
even now in the midst of a movement as forceful and 
irregular as any in the past ages. There is always, 
in the very nature of these movements, cause of 
alarm. There is danger in them, even the best of 
them. Among the forces at work there is much de- 
pravity of thought and feeling. The movement is 
not always that of the wise Leader. Not unfre- 
quently it is the raging of a blind demigod, roused 
by some chance to fury. There is much unwise 
demolition of structures that must be builded again. 

If we are, then, in the midst of a new era of 
thought, if the great stream of history in Christen- 
dom has just started down a slant toward some new 
precipice, it becomes us well to study the elements 
and direction of the movement, and avert, as much 
as in us lies, the evil that may be in it. Much evil 
mixes itself in with the best movements, and some 
are almost wholly bad. He is a wise man who can, 
at all times, distinguish the tares from the wheat. 
For every Luther there must be a John of Leyden, 
and for every Latimer a Bonner. Licentiousness 
and despotism will balance each other. 

Let us look around. What are the forces that are 
coming together now to coalesce w T ith or to antagonize 
each other? Take American society as it is now. 
The ends of the earth are coming together here. 



14 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

Many antagonisms are meeting. From Europe — 
Germany and Ireland especially — there are coming 
in two streams, one upon classification — that is, on 
the basis of religion. Superstition and unbelief are 
the two streams. They are diverse as the waters of 
the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, but henceforth 
they are in one channel, and must get along down 
the stream together somehow, mingled or distinct, 
as the forces present may determine. Along with 
these is the sound Protestant thought of the country. 

Not to be despised among the elements of thought 
which affect faith, is Spiritism. Its appeal is made 
at once to that potent fact of consciousness, super- 
stition, and to sensuality, which is as powerful in its 
influence as the other. Let no man suppose that 
the American people are too highly educated to be 
superstitious. No culture can furnish a guarantee 
against it. It is a depraved exercise of the faith- 
faculty. This faculty is in the very constitution of 
man, and must become active. If it turns away 
from the Christian Scriptures it must find some false 
object. Then its exercise is superstition. No gro- 
tesque extravagance need surprise us, even among 
the most cultivated people, when the objects of faith 
are left to the " natural selection" of a depraved 
heart. 

As matter of fact the Spiritists are very numerous, 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 15 

especially in those regions where "public schools" 
have held undisputed sway for so long a time. They 
publish several periodicals and cheap books. They 
support a number of lecturers, men and women, of 
no little wit. They carry on an active and formida- 
ble movement of propagandism. What the end is 
to be no man can tell. They strike at the very 
foundation of social order. All sorts of social and 
disorganizing views gravitate toward this diabolical 
center. In its relation to Christianity it is directly 
and intensely infidel. 

Let ns hope that Mormonism and Chinese Buddh- 
ism will never be appreciable elements of society on 
this continent. And yet, who knows that they will 
not? 

Among the social elements coming into active 
force the chief are the doctrine of "woman's rights," 
so-called, and Communism. The woman's move- 
ment assails, without any mincing or disguise — or at 
least many of its advocates do, and, logically, it 
comes to that — the Scriptural order as to domestic 
relations. A large proportion of its champions are 
infidels. The system itself is, logically, infidel and 
disorganizing. It is fatal to the existence of the 
family, and that is the corner-stone of all organiza- 
tion, both social and civil. Without the family the 
State goes to pieces, and anarchy takes possession 



16 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

of the world. Then civilization itself becomes im- 
possible. Loosen woman from her heaven-appointed 
and most beautiful orbit and everything goes to 
wreck. It is the charm of woman's modesty and 
purity that holds all society in its coherency. Anal- 
yze it and you will see that this is true. Woman's 
modesty and purity are the very heart of the social 
fabric. They form the center of gravitation, hold- 
ing everything in its place. 

Yet there are not wanting popular preachers, and 
influential dignitaries of the Church, who are urging 
this mad theory, and lending the influence of their 
character to coarsen women into a political hack, so 
that all the magnetism of her pure, high nature may 
be, if possible, destroyed. It is not the first time 
that professed ministers of religion have volunteered 
to do devils' work. But, as I have intimated, there 
is an irresistible drift toward infidelity in all this 
business, and many of the women engaged in it are 
already debased. One of the most fatal features of 
it is that those women who have the credit of being 
virtuous wink at the base characters who volunteer 
to help on the movement. In some quarters the ten- 
dency of this movement to destroy the distinction 
between vice and virtue is already apparent. 

Yet the movement has gained ground, and many 
believe that it is still gaining. Whereunto it may 
grow who can tell ? 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 17 

Communism is Kadicalism in its final form. Its 
historical antecedents are the leveling doctrines of 
the French infidelity of the eighteenth century, im- 
ported by Jefferson, Franklin, and Paine, into this 
country, and popularized by them and others during 
our revolt against the mother country. These doc- 
trines were taken up and pushed forward upon the 
line of their inevitable logic by the Radicals and 
fanatical Abolitionists of this country, until they 
embroiled the nation in a horrible civil war. And 
the momentum of the movement, if I see clearly, is 
still increasing. We have seen its last bloody work 
in Paris. Thoughtful men, in the more populous 
regions of our country, dread the development of 
the next five years. For this Radicalism, Aboli- 
tionism, Communism, whichever you may choose to 
call it, is also called by another name — Agrarianism. 
It is a war on all distinctions. It is the last term of 
its syllogism, the first being this : All men are 
created equal. 

Communism, too, is, in the essence of it, infidel, 
for it assails the very foundation on which religion 
is built. It contemns authority, despises dignities. 
It is the antagonist of order, for distinctions are 
essential in the very idea of order, and religion rests 
on order. 

It has the popular advantage now of having car- 



18 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

ried on a successful war in this country, and, by one 
of those delusions that are inevitable among the 
masses, who, educate them as you may, can never 
have insight sufficient for discrimination, has the 
credit of being loyal, and of supporting order and 
law. In the unseen forces that do the world's work 
always below the surface, with this popular delusion 
to hasten the issue, Radicalism is undermining other 
structures that, when they fall, will bury many who 
helped on the work and knew not what they did. 

Over and against this Communistic movement is 
the rapid and enormous accumulation of capital by 
individuals and corporations. As population and 
the resources of the country increase, commercial 
enterprise will, in many cases, meet with still larger 
success, and corporations and monopolies become 
yet more enormously wealthy. This will aggravate 
the spirit of Communism. There was a great deal 
of honest fanaticism in the Abolitionist excitement, 
but in multitudes of cases it took its highest temper 
and keenest edge from envy of the Southern gentle- 
man living on his princely estates in ease and splen- 
dor, made rich by the labor of his vassals. In like 
manner the honest views of Communist dreamers 
take a spice of bitterness in sight of the palace and 
the glittering equipage of the great manufacturer, 
the great merchant, the great bondholder, and the 
great banker. 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 19 

Unfortunately there is much of evil and wrong in 
those things upon which the Agrarian makes war. 
Wealth is, in many cases, pompous and arrogant. 
Rich men do, not unfrequently, take advantage of 
the power money gives them for purposes of extor- 
tion. Corporations influence legislation to increase 
their monopolies by a corrupt use of monejr. Labor 
is often put at a disadvantage by them. But the 
Communist is blind to two things. The first is, that 
evil is inherent in human life and affairs ; and the 
second, that the evils inherent in this theory are 
much greater than even in the institutions he assails. 

Already there are Communist organizations in 
many of the Eastern cities. They hold public meet- 
ings, and are bold and outspoken. Politicians begin 
to court them . They are in earnest, and the country 
will be agitated by them from one end to the other. 
I can conceive conditions, not unlikely to arise, in 
which they may involve the country in a war in 
which religion will play a part. 

I mention these matters for this purpose : to show 
that there is a fevered condition of the public mind, 
and a consequent tendency, a very strong one, to 
extreme views. The imaginations of men are dis- 
tempered. The antagonisms of the day aggravate 
the tendency. 



20 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 



I have given several facts showing an unhealthy 
condition of thought in many quarters, and a strong 
tendency to new and extreme opinions in questions 
of vital import. The facts given do not cover the 
ground. The instances in which thought is drifting 
from its moorings are numerous, and the movement 
is found more in matters connected with religion than 
any other. It looks, moreover, to a lax interpreta- 
tion in doctrine, and an indulgent construction in 
questions of self-denial and duty. One of the im- 
mediate effects is that the religious consciousness is 
less intense. 

A very notable instance of this is apparent in the 
habits of the people with respect to the observance 
of the Sabbath day. A great change has been 
wrought by the influx of immigrants from the conti- 
nent of Europe. It is fully within my recollection 
that a Christian man would have been held as a 
violator of the Sabbath if he had gone or sent for 
his mail-matter on that day. Fifteen years ago very 
few church members, within my knowledge, took 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 21 

the Sunday papers. Nor can I doubt that much that 
is deepest and most commanding in Christian senti- 
ment goes along with strict views of the sanctity of 
the Lord's day, and with the strict consecration of 
it to his service. 

Before the civil war, or, rather, before the agita- 
tions that led to it, a strong and wholesome con- 
servatism restrained all ecclesiastics and ecclesiastical 
bodies from intermeddling with political affairs. 
Since that time the nation has become familiar with 
the names of clerical hotspurs vociferously leading 
the charge in every partisan foray. I forbear, at 
present, to point out the inevitable practical tendency 
of this state of things. That it will intensify and 
embitter political strifes and foment yet other wars I 
can not question, but I introduce it here only as an 
instance of vital and most significant change going 
on — of an irregular and radical movement of thought 
in the country. What had long been held to be 
sacred and inviolable boundaries are crossed without 
compunction. A vaulting, ambitious spirit is abroad, 
intensely revolutionary in its impulses and reckless 
in its methods and expedients. 

A few successful men, who, by a daring, dashing 
manner in the pulpit, supported by a good deal of 
personal power, have acquired a national celebrity, 
are followed by a host of imitators whose only chance 



22 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

of distinction lies in saying new and startling things, 
or adventuring upon some independent, dashing line 
of policy. A great deal of erratic and unhealthy 
thought gets afloat by this means. Fortunately, 
however, there is but little of it that has sufficient 
vitality or vigor to keep itself long on the surface. 
Most of it soon sinks out of sight, never agitating 
but a small circle, and that but for a moment. 

A favorite field with many men of this class is the 
prophecies. A little activity of imagination, and a 
few months' reading in this line, will furnish a man 
with the requisite resources for sensational declama- 
tion. There has always been an unhealthy eagerness 
to lift the veil and pry into the future. No man can 
so charm the public ear as he who is able to assure 
his auditors from plain prophecy that great events 
are imminent — that fearful times are impending — 
that wars, or something worse than wars, are just at 
hand. If it be all set forth duly from behind a pair 
of most reverend and wise-looking spectacles, with 
elaborate computation of prophetic dates, and the 
tone and aspect of conviction and sincerity, its recep- 
tion is secured. There is nothing that produces 
conviction like figures. Let a man get a few dates 
from Daniel and the Apocalypse, and a few myste- 
riously stated numbers, such as "the time, times and 
a half," and fall to work on them with the four rudi- 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 23 

mentary rules of arithmetic — addition, subtraction, 
multiplication and division — and you shall soon see 
many men convinced. There is an honest, matter-of- 
fact aspect about the Arabic numerals that we instinc- 
tively trust. They are our familiar acquaintances 
and tried friends. By their help we find out how 
much our wheat crop comes to when we sell it. They 
never deceive us. They tell us exactly the sum of 
this bill of dry-goods. And did not the lecturer on 
prophecy add and subtract just in the same way, 
with the same trusty numerals to guide the process 
and report the result ? 

For the most part these vagaries have a short run 
and do but little harm. But occasionally they 
agitate the Church for a considerable period and 
bring in a most unhealthy state, both of thought and 
feeling. Of all the delusions arising from this source, 
that of the Millenarians has been the most prevalent 
and the most damaging. From the earliest times 
until now there have been periodical revivals of this 
error, and always with the belief that the great event 
was just at hand. 

Just now, within the last few years, it has started 
up afresh, and, unhappily, among men of fine talents 
and cultivation, and undoubted piety. Like all de- 
lusions, it is embraced with ardor and propagated 
with enthusiasm. The scholarly tone of the books 



24 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

written in its defense, and the high character of the 
men who advocate it, secure respectful audience. 
There is a certain very intense type of piety — not 
the most exalted, perhaps, but very fervent and self- 
conscious — to which the personal reign of Christ 
among men, ruling the heathen with a rod of iron, 
would be very welcome. Possibly we expect to sit 
on his right hand and on his left hand in his king- 
dom. There is also another and higher type of 
piety that longs for his coming in the mere ardor of 
love, and thinks of little else than simply of being 
with him and seeing his face. It may be that in 
many such cases the only imperfection is a sensuous 
tinge. It is not the highest spiritual anticipation of 
the presence of Christ that is indulged. The halo 
about his person is not of pure, celestial light. There 
is somewhat of the vapor of earthiness in the medium 
through which he is contemplated. The color of the 
picture is the warmer and more palpable from this 
fact, and the effect on the sensibilities, may be, more 
acute. 

The immediate precursor of the present Millena- 
rian movement was Millerism. Miller's adherents 
were, as a class, far less respectable for intelligence 
than the Millenarians of the present day. Many of 
the most cultivated and earnest Christians of Europe 
and America are looking for the Lord to come at 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM 25 



almost any moment, and set up his throne on the 
earth. This expectation is a hot-bed out of which 
not only Christian love shoots into a quick and large 
development, but other and unhealthy sentiments 
also arise. Loose rein given to a fervid imagination 
is never safe. A disorganizing spirit already threat- 
ens to arise out of it in this case. It stands as an- 
other instance and another proof of the unbalanced 
and ill-regulated movement of thought on all sides. 

I suppose there has been as much light cast upon the 
great problem of evil within these twenty-five years 
past as in all the ages preceding. But along with 
the sober, capable investigation has arisen a world of 
pretensions affectation of philosophical depth, which 
makes a blunder every time it undertakes to make an 
argument. Men of this class are confident and noisy 
in proportion to their incapacity. The influence of 
any one of them amounts to but little, but in the 
aggregate they constitute a very appreciable factor 
in the world of thought, and go to make up the sum 
of irregular and sinister activities that characterize 
the present time. They form no mean proportion of 
the mischievous tendencies of the moment. 

Not even the Church gf Rome has escaped the uni- 
versal agitation. On the continent of Europe eccle- 
siastical despotisms that were rooted in the customs 
of centuries have yielded to the force of the new 



26 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

movement. In Italy, Spain and Austria, where, a 
few years ago, everything seemed to lie in the torpor 
of a merely quiescent faith, the spell has been broken. 
Traditional claims of the church have been resisted 
and important liberties secured. Even Mexico has 
not escaped the world-wide impulse. The incubus 
of ecclesiasticism sets more lightly even on her. A 
free movement of thought begins to be apparent. 

Strange to say, in Great Britain and the United 
States the Roman Catholic mind seems to acquiesce 
more fully in the spiritual despotism of the church 
than in any other country. Just here whei*e thought 
is free as air, the absolute authority of the church 
over thought is yielded by the Romanist in this coun- 
try more readily than it is in Austria. There is not 
so much as one Dollinger to be found. This is to 
be accounted for by the fact that in this country the 
Romanists are constantly on the defensive. The ab- 
surdities of their creed are being constantly assailed, 
so that they are roused constantly against all comers. 
This is just the state of mind in which men will go for 
their sect to any length or any extremity. They will 
take the most extreme ground when excited by op- 
position. The Romanists of this country and Eng- 
land, therefore, intelligent as many of them are, are 
ready for anything that their church may demand. 
They will perform feats of credulity that might edify 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 27 

a Spaniard. If the Bishops say so, the Pope is in- 
fallible. 

But in Europe the church has its Hyacinthes and 
Dollingers, and gives proof of the presence of a 
restive spirit of inquiry. 

Simultaneously with this new impulse is also a 
backward movement. It is an effort of the church 
to settle itself so deeply upon its 4 'rock" that the 
stream of truth may be defied. The Pontificate of 
Pius IX. is distinguished for having originated two 
dogmas, the most remarkable and the most taxing 
upon credulity that have ever appeared in the history 
of canons. The first was the do^ma of the Immac- 
ulate Conception of the Virgin Mary, and the second 
the Infallibility of the Pope. 

The desperate backward movement of Rome is 
itself a sign of the time. It is an effort of the Papacy 
to fortify itself against the encroachments of the 
rising tide which threatens to engulf it. It is the 
counter movement, and, therefore, itself "an evidence 
of the extent and power of the current of thought 
that has swelled above its banks and sweeps over the 
world. 

No one can be blind enough not to see it. The 
new era of thought is restless and adventurous, and 
attacks with equal eagerness the old error and the 
old truth. Once fairly warm in the work of demoli- 



28 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

tion, it knows not where to stop. It falls into a 
frenzy of contempt for the past, and despises the old 
truth for no other reason than that it is old. The 
truth and the error that have the common accident 
of being old are doomed to indiscriminating assault. 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 29 



No state of mind is more unfriendly to the recep- 
tion of truth than intellectual pride. God, who 
knows what is in man, has given us this injunction : 
i ' Lean not to thine own understanding. ' ' But there 
is a large class of men who distain all restraint upon 
the intellect, and rejoice upon the proud delusion of 
reason. Since the publication of the 6 4 Positive Phi- 
losophy ' ' the haughty ambition to assert the suprem- 
acy of reason, even in the domain of faith, has become 
more apparent and noisy. Men will make even the 
mysteries of religion subject to the same analysis as 
physical science. They will not tolerate mystery. 
Nothing must be allowed to be above them. They 
must feel themselves to be supreme in intellectual 
power over all things. 

There is not a more dangerous nor a more wicked 
sentiment. Not that it is wrong for a man to know 
all that may be known, or to understand all that may 
be understood. But not to recognize the limit of 
knowledge, not to admit the weakness of reason, is 



30 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

to show the greater weakness — the weakness of van- 
ity. True strength recognizes its own limit and acts 
upon the true conception of its own resources. Hu- 
mility is a condition of the right exercise of reason. 
The best results of rational investigation are attained 
by those who know that there are infinite heights 
above them, and who keep clear of the confusion 
that results from the mad effort to reason in regions 
that are above the reach of our reason. Keeping 
themselves in the light, they escape the embarrass- 
ments and blunders of those who adventure into the 
confines of darkness. 

The philosophy that will allow nothing to be above 
itself will be evermore walking in darkness. It will 
be evermore delivering its rational conclusions only 
to be convicted of ignorance and falsehood. This 
species of philosophy has been greatly on the increase 
of late years. It will extend a scientific method into 
fields where the facts are wanting from which a 
method may be constructed. 

The consequence is, that every new advance of 
science gives rise to hasty conclusions which imme- 
diately require revision and correction. The history 
of Geology furnishes an illustration. From most 
insufficient data the scientist constructs a cosmogony 
only to be confounded by the discovery of further 
facts which destroy the basis of his theory. Expe- 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 31 

rience ought, ere this time, to have made men modest. 
But they become constantly more presuming, and 
every little philosopher must put in his word and 
hear himself talk. 

The great gaping world, meantime, encourages this 
class of men by its eager credulity. Any man who 
has sufficient ingenuity to propound a new theory, or 
to set an old one in a new light, can gain audience. 
Especially so if he shall invade the domain of Faith. 
Whatever sets itself up to correct the Bible will be 
welcomed by an eager and credulous multitude. If 
only it shall assume a learned air, and deliver itself 
with abundant affectation of scientific terminology, 
its fortune is made. It will have its run. 

There is a class of writers who have really a high 
claim to distinction as laborious investigators. There 
is much truth given. These men are recognized and 
honored as savans, and justly so. Men admire them. 
Much that they say is true and convincing. The 
credit they acquire for thoroughness and depth dis- 
arms criticism, and men fall into the snare of receiv- 
ing whatever they may say. But, unfortunately, in 
addition to the accurate scientific results which they 
give, there is much loose deduction, much inference 
and speculation, and all sorts of monstrous and ille- 
gitimate conclusions are unwittingly taken on the 
credit of that which is true. 



32 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

It was this which gave such a mischievous influence 
to the " Vestiges of Creation." It is the same accu- 
racy of laborious research which enables Darwin to 
secure credence for those inferences which he makes, 
as if they were necessary results, when in fact they 
are not at all so. They are accepted partly for the 
show of learning with which they are set forth, and 
partly on account of a disposition, prevalent in some 
quarters, to embrace anything that may militate 
against the simple truth of the history of creation in 
the book of Genesis. They minister to the pride of 
intellect which is restless under all restraint. It is 
so restless that it will grasp at any theory which as- 
sumes a rational tone rather than rest upon a divine 
statement in simple faith. 

How prevalent and dangerous this disposition is 
appears from the popularity of the speculations of 
Knott and Gliddon — speculations that would, as I 
believe, have commanded little or no attention but 
from the fact that they were supposed to conflict with 
the Christian account of the origin of our race. For 
this reason, I take it, many half-educated men, with 
little of either capacity or opportunity for learned 
investigation, and desiring to appear the champions 
of science as against revelation, become ready disci- 
ples of any teacher who will offer them a theory of 
the origin of man which professes to rest on grounds 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 33 

of scientific induction. No matter how loosely the 
conclusions may be hung on to the premises, if there 
is only ample parade of scholarship in setting forth 
the premises, they will be welcomed as a plausible 
pretext against the literal import of the Word of 
God. 

Indeed, very little either of learning or capacity 
will suffice to give the scientific pretender prestige. 
So wide-spread is this abnormal tendency of thought 
that such a miserable jumble of misstatements and 
absurdities as appear in ' 6 Ariel ' ' is greedily devoured 
by vast numbers of men who think themselves wise, 
and have neither the amount of information nor of 
common sense to enable them to detect the grossest 
misstatements or the most bungling fallacies. Thus 
the most pitiable unreason struts and takes on schol- 
arly airs, and chuckles in ludicrous conceit of its own 
reason. This poor pamphlet, " Ariel," had such a 
run that even Doctors of Divinity found it necessary 
to undertake a grave and formal refutation of it. 

All this betrays a lust after new theories. It is a 
bad state of mind — a sort of mental fever which 
needs medication. 

Nor has the Church escaped the contagion. Men 
with a little learning must recast the doctrine of the 
fathers. Not because the old doctrine does not rest 
on a firm basis of Scripture, but from a restless de- 



34 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

sire to discover something new, men are sometimes 
betrayed into dangerous habits of theorizing, which, 
in some cases, threaten to end in disastrous misbe- 
lief. The lust of novelty takes possession of them, 
and with it sometimes also a certain vanity which is 
ambitious of distinction. Possibly this subtle mo- 
tive is present in many cases where it is not suspected. 
Men who would not admit the fact to themselves 
come to relish the reputation of being innovators. 
They love to be considered, and to consider them- 
selves, adventurous thinkers. They "lean to their 
own understanding." The spirit of the Positive 
Philosophy takes possession of them. They will 
not be considered imitators. They will explore their 
own pathway through the wilderness of thought. 
They will not follow the open highways. No doubt 
they take great pleasure in their own speculations, 
and the results of their labor are very satisfactory to 
their own reason, so that they come to entertain a 
very high opinion of their reason. In proportion as 
they do so they lose respect for the fathers, and con- * 
elude that the shackles of the past are to be cast off 
and spurned. The doctrinal formulae of the ages 
that are gone come to be lightly esteemed. They 
make a merit of being independent of all traditional 
trammels. They will call no man master. They 
will think for themselves. 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 35 

All this sounds finely and is very taking. But it 
betrays a dangerous condition. 

Of course, a doctrine is not to be accepted merely 
on the ground of its antiquity. Many fatal errors 
have a traditional prestige. Nevertheless, that is not 
a safe temper which leads a man to break hastily and 
violently away from the past. The pride of innova- 
tion is not favorable to candid thought. It impels 
men forward before the ground has been thoroughly 
surveyed, so that the innovator who haughtily repu- 
diates the past is very likely to embrace novelties for 
the reason that they are novelties, which is no better 
proof of the truth of a doctrine than antiquity is. 
Indeed, a new doctrine is to be more suspected of 
error, a priori, than an old one. There is a certain 
respect, and even veneration, due to opinions that 
have been held by the wise and good of many gen- 
erations, though it may turn out that the wise and 
good have been in error for many generations. Yet 
there is a fair presumption in their favor until the 
proof against them has been most thoroughly sifted. 
It is more prudent to follow them than to take one's 
own way rashly and in the mere wantonness of ad- 
venture and novelty. We may go astray by follow- 
ing the beaten track, but we are less likely to do so 
than if we attempt the wilderness without a guide. 

If a young man had all knowledge and all experi- 



36 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

ence he might safely follow the leadings of his 
thought. But he has not, and on many points on 
which it seems to him that he has all the bearings of 
the case he will find after a while that he was mis- 
taken, and that after all the fathers had thought 
more deeply than he. He sees the matter in a strong 
light on one side and hastily concludes that the whole 
truth is in that view. In the joy of his new discov- 
ery he graciously commiserates all that went before 
him, and congratulates all w^ho are to come after him. 
Older and wiser men, however, know that he has 
seen the chameleon only in one situation. The dan- 
ger with him now is that he will commit himself to 
the assertion that the creature is green, and feel 
bound to defend it against all comers to his life's 
end. 

While, therefore, the new is not to be condemned 
because it is new, still less is to be accepted on that 
ground. On the contrary, it is to be held under 
suspicion until it is well vindicated. 

In the midst of the rapid evolutions of the present 
time we are in danger of disparaging antiquity — of 
holding it in contempt — and, in excess of self-confi- 
dence, going fairly wild in the abandon of specula- 
tive adventure. Thousands are doing it, to the 
detriment of religion and morals. What truth is 
yet to be discovered let us have it by all means. 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 37 

But let us look out, in the meantime, that we do not 
exchange the Koh-i-noor for a paste imitation from 
Paris. Inexperienced traffickers in gems might com- 
mit such a blunder. 



38 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 



I have mentioned a number of facts which indi- 
cate a strong tendency, at this time, toward extreme 
theories and adventurous speculation — a tendency 
so wide-spread and infectious as, perhaps, to threaten 
even the integrity of doctrine in the Church. 

Many things conspire at this juncture to aggravate 
the tendency. Christian civilization is undergoing 
great changes. Industries are being put on a new 
footing by means of a new motive power and the use 
of machinery in every department of labor. Great 
corporations and monopolies are carrying on the 
world's work. They have displaced individual en- 
terprise in many employments. Travel, both by 
land and water, has been revolutionized. Every 
thing is quickened amazingly. Conversation is car- 
ried on b}^ lightning, and the ends of the earth have 
been brought together. 

© © 

This is all the result of intense mental activity, 
and tends to increase the activity which has produced 
it. Human thought is at work upon the forces of 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 39 

nature beyond anything known in the past. It is 
prying into the occult relation of natural laws with 
most wonderful acuteness and force. Every day 
witnesses a new discovery and lays bare a new secret. 
Priceless rewards of mental effort provoke to more 
arduous endeavor. The mental stimulus is tremen- 
dous, and the action produced by it in many cases 
intense to a degree that is unhealthy. The tension 
is unnatural. The results are in many respects of 
great value, but the over- tension is a high price, in 
many cases, for the good result. In this evil world 
there is ever some evil going on along with the good, 
to balance it in a measure. 

The mental tension of our day brings along much 
good with it. It brings, also, some evil. Thought, 
over-stimulated, can not always work safely. There 
will be lesion occasionally. There will be misdi- 
rection. 

One accompaniment of this unusual mental ac- 
tivity, and indeed an incident of it, is the unprece- 
dented facility for the diffusion of thought. Ideas, 
true or false, have most ample means of propaga- 
tion. Men are in vital communication with each 
other all over the world . All that goes on now is 
at once made public. The telegraph, the steamship, 
the railroad, and the daily paper, give it to the four 
winds. This incessant communication brings all the 



40 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

enterprises, ideas, theories, and activities of the 
world into constant competition. The consequence 
is, an active fermentation of thought. New ingre- 
dients are placed together in the crucible every day, 
to result in agitation, and ultimate in new combina- 
tions, affecting thought and opinion in every depart- 
ment of life. The opinions of all the world get 
mixed in with each other now. The German philos- 
ophy, the Parisian infidelity and socialism, the Eng- 
lish liberalism, the New England spiritism and 
free-loveism, the Romanist fanaticism, and the Lib- 
eralist irreverence — all sorts of speculations and 
fancies and beliefs mingled with each other, spread 
abroad with the speed of the railroad, over the whole 
earth, inviting comparison and provoking discussion. 
And men are everywhere at work, with such faculty 
of thought as they have been endowed with every- 
where, upon all the beliefs and all the unbeliefs 
that are in the world. The mental stomach is 
over-loaded, and there is much bad digestion. The 
mass is too great to be well disposed of. There 
is not only dyspepsia (of which there is much), but 
fever. 

The activity of the press contributes to the effect. 
All sorts of ideas are in incessant daily plaj% through 
the newspapers, upon the public mind. All sorts 
of sense and nonsense get a hearing through this 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 41 

medium. All the world is in incessant intercourse, 
and every species of opinion gets afloat to play what 
part it may be for good or ill. At the same time a 
large and increasing class of men and women live by 
literary labor. There is great temptation when they 
write for bread, to write for mere popular effect. 
Sensational theories are always greedily taken by 
the public. Much deleterious literature is provided 
just because it will pay. This all helps on the 
prevalence of vitiated thought. 

To make the matter worse, every half-educated 
man believes in himself. He esteems himself a very 
capable thinker. It is a hobby with the American 
teacher to make the pupil think for himself. The 
boy at school, while the down is yet invisible upon his 
upper lip, imagines himself profound. It is his duty 
to form an opinion, and he forms it, and is nothing 
loth to announce it. His opinion is as good as that 
of any one else. So he is encouraged to believe, 
and so he is very ready to believe. Before his mind 
has reached any such maturity as to enable him to 
reason elliciently or safely, he is dashing on to his 
conclusions by a short route. The habit of forming 
opinions promptly is soon acquired. He feels him- 
self disparaged unless he has an opinion ready on 
all sorts of subjects. Henceforth you shall never 
find him at a loss. He will have his views, and will 



42 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

be very well pleased with himself in being able to 
take his stand on every subject. 

It is marvelous how many small men there are, 
who get everything at second-hand, and yet believe 
themselves great thinkers. A narrow mind, made 
active by educational stimulus, is sure to be self- 
reliant and dogmatic. Incapable of seeing a matter 
in more than one of its relations, it reaches its con- 
clusions at once, and is supremely satisfied with the 
clearness of its view, while one of larger range is 
embarrassed by the many considerations which it 
perceives as having to be disposed of before the 
truth is reached. 

This self-reliant littleness abounds in the land, and 
it is very responsive to new and startling theories. 
The first plausible putting of a new doctrine strikes 
them, and they embrace it instantly. Once com- 
mitter to it they become enthusiastic disciples and 
propagandists, and their very narrowness and self- 
conceit insure them against discovering the blunder 
they have made. They soon master the routine of 
shallow plausibilities by which the new opinion is 
maintained, and, prjud of their own volubility, they 
never tire of " argument." 

The wide diffusion of educational advantages in 
this country has multiplied this class of men very 
greatly. You will find them in every village, at 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 43 

every cross-roads. They are not without their in- 
fluence. To men less educated, and especially to 
boys, they seem very learned and very wise. Their 
opinions weigh much in their little circle. By virtue 
of the fact that they are " educated," they feel them- 
selves bound to have an opinion, and by virtue of 
their pride of leadership they are tempted to em- 
brace and propagate new opinions. At the same 
time, by virtue of natural shallowness, when they 
begin to adventure upon new courses of thought, 
they are sure to go wrong. 

Upon the whole, activity, intenseness and adven- 
ture characterize the present period. The world is 
too enterprising for sobriety. The newspaper is 
" master of the situation." Opinions formed on the 
suggestion of the moment go into print while they 
are hot. The newspaper is the voice of the day. 
All conceivable varieties of' editors and correspond- 
ents deliver all conceivable varieties of statements 
and speculations. These go far to form the mind of 
the country. In all this heat and hurry there is much 
greater likelihood of finding intensity than a safe 
maturity of thought. 

From what I have written it is not to be inferred 
that I take a gloomy view of the situation. Far 
from it. I have said already that the movement is, 
in the long run, a true progress. Out of all the up- 



44 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

ro*\r and effervescence of the present time good will 
come in the end. In the meantime the movement 
is, just now, too violent to he free from danger. 
There are sinister elements present. The activity of 
the moment is feverish. It threatens, for the time 
being, to unsettle in many minds the most element- 
ary truths of religion and morals Amid the im- 
perfections of thought and depravities of feeling that 
are inherent in human nature we must look well to 
those primary conditions of all that is good which 
are given in the Christian faith. 

I would by no means check the progress of the 
world, but I would, if possible, guard against the 
evils that are incidental to progress. While human- 
ity is hurrying on to a higher civilization let us see 
to it that the result be not delayed and damaged by 
the very headlong speed of the movement. Let 
Paris bear witness that there is danger. Let our 
own civil war bear witness. Let the deterioration of 
morals that follows upon the track of socialist and 
free-love ideas bear witness. Let the licentious ten- 
dencies so apparent on all sides at this moment bear 
witness. 

In a word, when progress ceases to be regulated 
by a sound conservatism of sentiment it runs too fast 
and goes to wreck. There are great principles of 
truth that must be the basis of all progress, and 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 45 



when a mad spirit of change, which is sometimes an 
incident of progress, disregards them, ruin follows. 
The same headlands that indicated the track of safety 
to the rude sailor of three thousand years ago must 
be consulted by the pilot of the steamship to-day. 



46 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 



I have already mentioned the spirit of independ- 
ence, the want of reverence for the past, which ob- 
tains so largely at this time. This spirit is more to 
be dreaded in the hurry and fever prevalent now than 
in more sober times. But it is an incident of the 
vfery cause which makes it dangerous. It is the more 
to be dreaded on account of the plausible grounds 
upon which it justifies itself. The past is full of 
error — mischievous and fatal error. The inference 
is that, therefore, the past is entitled to no respect. 

But it must be remembered that there has been a 
line of belief from the first ages, settled, fixed, 
definite, amid all the complex and protean forms of 
misbelief. About this faith all that is stable and 
pure in the Church from age to age has clustered. 
It is readily discovered through all that is adventi- 
tious, and of later or occasional prevalence. From 
ante-Papal and ante-Palagian times it shines, a fixed 
star in Christian thought. From time to time it has 
been formulated with great accuracy in standards of 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 47 



belief about which the Church has crystallized, and 
by which it has been held in its integrity against the 
irruption of all false philosophies and semi-pagan su- 
perstitions. The influence of those perennial beliefs 
has been singularly independent of organic condi- 
tions. The Church is not a close corporation, hold- 
ing in virtue of organic and historic succession. It is 
the outgrowth of a spirit. It is the expression of a 
life. In its organic history there has been mutation. 
The Church of Rome and the Greek Church have 
maintained an external, organic existence from the 
early ages of the Christian era. But in everything 
that belongs to the ecclesiastical constitution they 
are radically changed. In the course of the ages the 
early spirit has appeared constantly, here and there, 
in connection with the early creed, and, independent 
of organic unities, has presented evermore the vital 
"unity of faith." 

Surely we must respect, we must venerate the form 
of sound words which has been the conservator of 
the Church amid all the vicissitudes of time, and 
against all the encroachments of hierarchies and the 
corruptions of ecclesiasticism. Rome, a perpetual 
corporation, has perpetually changed her creed. 
There have been two additions in our day. But 
there is a historical creed, ever bearing witness 
against her innovations on one side, and against all 



48 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

other heresies on the other, that stands as a beacon 
through all the past. 

Certainly an undiscriminating veneration of an- 
tiquity, simply as such, is not safe, any more 
than lust of novelty. But the veneration of the 
old beliefs around which the piety of apostles and 
martyrs appears as a halo, which have been the ral- 
lying point of saints and confessors in all the ages, 
is a very high and pure sentiment. It is a most 
wholesome conservatism. 

Indeed, mere conservatism, mere clinging to the 
belief we have, so it be not hopelessly obstinate or 
stupid, serves a good end. It keeps a man in posi- 
tion long enough to move safely when he does move. 
It preserves him from rash changes. It saves him 
from an erratic course. It is better to be a little 
too stationary than to move too lightly. Many a 
man has resisted specious error when he could not 
confute it, just from a conservative tone of feeling, 
until, having gained time, he has come to detect the 
falsehood of the new theory. Holding on at first 
from sentiment, for awhile, the time gained has 
brought conviction. 

The supreme purpose must ever be to follow the 
truth — not to follow that which is old nor that which 
is new, as such. But it is never safe to grasp a new 
doctrine upon first blush. Time must be taken for 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 49 



sober reflection, and the conservative spirit secures 
time. 

Besides that, there is a just presumption of the 
truth of that doctrine which wise and thoughtful and 
good men in all the past have deduced from Holy 
Scripture. The presumption is not final proof, but 
must have great weight with all well-balanced minds. 
It would certainly be great presumption in any man 
to discard the Apostles' Creed upon any hasty inter- 
pretation or partial investigation. Its history enti- 
tles it to great weight. 

The fact is, that to a very large extent men's be- 
liefs are formed upon grounds other than a broad 
induction upon satisfactory investigation. Few men 
have either the opportunity or capacity for such ii>- 
vestigation. Hence the necessity for teachers of 
religion. The teacher is not infallible, but he ought 
to be an intelligent interpreter and expositor of the 
infallible standard, which is the Bible. The un- 
learned man is greatly dependent upon the prevalent 
yiews of his circle. His own are largely taken from 
the men whom he respects as leaders of thought. 
The belief of any Church will be inevitably taken 
largely from its ministers. It is inevitable that it 
should be so. And it is well. The more intelligent 
minds of the Church, carefully searching the Scrip- 
tures, and in communion with the purest forms of 



50 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

Christian thought in the past, are not likely to go 
astray. Individuals will, but the pastorate, in the 
long run, will hold the true doctrine. No one of 
them is infallible, nor all of them together. But 
Holy Scripture will assert itself upon the simplicity 
of a candid mind, and the true doctrine will prevail 
where the supremacy of the Bible is recognized and 
the pride of innovation is overcome. 

6 6 The universal consent of the fathers " is a fic- 
tion. Yet there was great uniformity of doctrine in 
the earliest ages of the Church. But to take patristic 
authority as equal to that of the Bible, is yet more 
fatal error than the total repudiation of creeds. The 
true course lies between the two in the way I have 
already indicated. The interpretation that has held 
its ground for eighteen hundred years, though not a 
final authority, is greatly to be venerated. It is not 
likely to be found false. 

True, much error has come into Christian teach- 
ing, and it is to be found in some venerable creeds. 
So that at last the Bible is the final standard. Doc- 
trines that are not found at all in that book are of 
course false. This class of doctrines can be easily 
traced in the history of the Church to the time when 
they first came in as innovations. Though compara- 
tively long established in a portion of the Church, 
they are recent as compared with the earliest stand- 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 51 

dards which have been generally received. The 
doctrines of purgatory, transubstantiation, priestly 
absolution, and many others, are of this class. 

The creed of the Eoman Church, indeed, plants 
itself on the authority of the Church. The Church, 
and not the Bible, in this theory, is the standard of 
truth. This is plainly false, for the Church in dif- 
ferent ages and countries is in conflict with itself. 
The standard is the Bible. The creed is but a com- 
pendious statement of the doctrine contained in Holy 
Scripture. In the Scriptures the sum of doctrine is 
nowhere given in a formal, compendious statement 
in one place. It is scattered through the whole vol- 
ume. The creed is a brief, condensed statement of 
them, and expresses the understanding of those who 
frame it as to what the Bible affirms upon the points 
embraced in it. It is not the mind of the Church as 
to what ought to be truth, but as to what the Bible 
affirms to be truth. 

To find out what this book teaches is an undertak- 
ing entirely compatible with the functions of the 
human understanding, and though the individual 
mind may fall into error and misinterpretation, yet 
the labor of the most cultivated and conscientious 
minds of the Church for centuries must be looked 
upon with great respect. The result of this labor is 
more likely to be a just interpretation than are the 



52 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

opinions of a single mind running in one line of 
thought. 

The teaching of the Bible upon the great vital doc- 
trines is remarkably clear. Then you say, what use 
for creeds? I answer, that the experience of all 
time is that there are constantly arising instances of 
marvelous perverseness of understanding on the part 
of plausible, ingenious men, who lead many astray. 
The collective good sense of the Church expressing 
in a condensed form the true teaching of the Bible, 
is a great safeguard against the influence of these 
perverse and erratic men. The right of a Church to 
require conformity to a creed will be considered 
hereafter, if God permit. At present I am only 
undertaking to show that the collective understand- 
ing of the wisest and best men is worthy of a very 
high regard when it is employed in ascertaining what 
God has communicated in Holy Scripture. 

When any set of men calling themselves "the 
Church," undertake the authority of making doc- 
trine independently of the Scriptures, it is quite an- 
other thing. In point of fact, nearly all the super- 
stitions appearing in the Church are to be traced to 
that cause. On the other hand, a proud indepen- 
dence and disposition to be be bold and adventurous 
in the use of individual liberty has given rise to many 
erratic movements and mischievous heresies. 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 53 

Many men in our day have had their heads turned 
with the idea of progress, and are looking for pro- 
gress in everything. No doubt we are making great 
progress in many particulars. But amidst the change 
there are some things that abide ever the same. We 
have to take the multiplication table exactly as our 
fathers did. 

The fundamental Christian doctrine is exactly the 
same in all ages, and to be received and understood 
in the same way. Nothing is more changeless. 
Nothing lies down deeper in the simplicity of abso- 
lute truth. It must remain as it is. 



54 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 



Indifference to creeds is often vaunted as a 
great virtue, and confounded with charity. The 
merit of charity is intuitively recognized and con- 
fessed by all. It is the chief grace. It has great 
credit with all men. In so great honor is it held, 
indeed, that whatever sails under its colors is secure 
of popular favor. In a world so disordered as this 
we live in many bad things manage to get into classi- 
fication with the good, and to secure homage from the 
association, when, if they were only in their own 
proper place they would be seen in their true char- 
acter, and be shunned and avoided as most deadly 
things. 

It is not the part of charity to be complacent to 
sin. Charity looks with no favor upon murder, 
adultery, or theft. All crime makes war on the 
good which it is in the nature of charity to establish 
and secure. Charity, is, therefore, repugnant to 
crime. All sin is an assault upon the good. To- 
ward all sin, therefore, charity must be repugnant. 

In the last analysis sin and falsehood are one. 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 55 



The ultimate truth in moral relations violated is sin. 
The ultimate truth in moral relations acted upon is 
virtue. To identify complacency toward a false 
creed with charity is therefore to confound light 
and darkness. There are no two things in nature 
or religion more incompatible. They are utterly 
and vehemently repugnant to each other. 

God has been at great pains to impress on us the 
value of the truth and the guilt of its rejection, or 
even indifference to it. He is "jealous of his word 
above all his name." How peculiar, how striking 
is this declaration ! He would have us to understand 
that the most sacred thing in his most holy name is 
his word. Men may trifle less guiltily with any 
thing else even in the divine perfections and prerog- 
atives. His truth may not be tampered with. Eead 
2 Thess. ii., 8-12. That Wicked, "whose coming 
is after the working of Satan with all power and 
signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness 
of unrighteousness in them that perish," perverts 
the faith of such as " receive not the love of the 
truth." This is the fatal fact. They receive not the 
love of the truth. They are not loyal to the 
Truth. Their hearts are alienated from it by pride 
or pleasure or lust, or some other selfish or carnal 
motive. The Truth is not supreme with them. 
"And for this cause" — mark how fearful the pen- 



56 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

alty is — 6 'for this cause God shall send them strong 
delusion, that they should believe a lie ; that they 
all might be damned who believed not the truth, 
but had pleasure in unrighteousness." Men who 
"receive not the love of the truth" God gives over 
to the domination of the lie they love, that they may 
be damned. They are abandoned to the strong de- 
lusion of their chosen lie with all its horrible retri- 
butions. God makes their own elect falsehood the 
instrument of their degradation and ruin. 

The very terms in which this passage is couched 
seem to have been selected to impress the mind with 
awe, and to produce a solemn sense of the guilt of 
trifling with the truth. • Upon those who do so trifle 
God sends strong delusion that they may believe 
their lie, and that believing it they may be damned. 

In fact, the foundations of all that is good are laid 
in truth. To be at variance with the truth is to be 
at variance with the good. Every departure from 
the truth is so far forth a departure from goodness. 
Indifference to creeds, so far as they symbolize the 
essential truth of Christian doctrine, is to be indif- 
ferent to all that is in the essence of religion itself. 
All that is sacred in religion is in its true creed. To 
err here is to err fatally. To be indifferent here is 
to be indifferent about religion itself. For the es- 
sence of religion is in the truth which it delivers. 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 



57 



The foundation of all worship, its experience and its 
practice, is here. If it is a crime to be indifferent 
about God at all, it is a crime to be indifferent about 
his Truth — his Word — of which he is jealous above 
all his name. 

The most vital element of a man's character is 
his belief. Pause upon this proposition a mo- 
ment. A man's belief is the fundamental fact in 
his character. Let me know what a man believes, 
and how deeply and strongly he believes it, and I 
will tell you all the rest. All character is the out- 
growth of faith. Men may in many cases act against 
their beliefs, but the belief in such cases is not deep 
and vital. Where it is deep and vital to act against 
it is the exception and not the rule. A belief loosely 
and carelessly held will produce no practical result, 
for the reason that no motive is called into operation 
by it. Other and deeper beliefs held at the same 
time will give their complexion to the character. So 
a man may believe in a careless way in the truth of 
the Bible, but he believes more strongly in the value 
of money ; and the stronger belief neutralizes the 
other and determines character. So it may even 
be that a man will "hold the truth in unrighteous- 
ness." 

In religion a man will be Pagan, Papist or Protes- 
tant, according to his belief. How vital and practical 



58 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

are the differences between those classes, I need not 
describe. All that is vital and practical in those dif- 
ferences comes of the differing beliefs. Upon his 
belief the Pagan will sacrifice his own offspring, even 
' 'the fruit of his body, for the sin of his soul." 
Upon his belief in priestly absolution the Papist will 
confide all his most secret sins to his confessor. 
Upon his belief the Protestant will go to God through 
Christ alone as the only Mediator. 

Let a man only be deeply and earnestly religious 
and his belief will give you the practical side of his 
religion as well as the theoretical side. All religion 
that has any subjective reality takes its complexion 
from beliefs. On this point certainly there can be 
no two opinions. 

If this be true, the question of creeds can not be 
an unimportant one. It is, in fact, the question of 
religion itself. Out of the creed all religion comes, 
subjectively. Religious thought, feeling and action 
are evolved out of it. Under its control a man will 
kill Stephen or die with him, as the case may be. It 
is the fact on which religious character hinges. 

Sincerity is sometimes held to be a corrective of 
all the evil effects of a wrong belief. " If a man is 
only sincere," we are told, " God will not hold him 
to account for a mistake in his creed." 

There are several things to be considered with re- 
spect to this view. 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 59 

In the first place, when a man begins to console 
himself in this way there is great clanger that he will 
come to hold the truth itself too lightly. It will 
cease to be the great object with him. He will not 
be jealous over himself as to what he is to believe. 
An easy going, self-complacent consciousness of sin- 
cerity (itself deception, maybe) will dispense him 
from any solemn obligation to know the truth. In 
this state of mind he is likely to embrace that which 
his fancy may be pleased with, or that which may 
accommodate his circumstances. Still the compla- 
cent self-affirmation of sincerity is undisturbed, and 
in virtue of it the man holds himself insured against 
all mischievous effects of any possible error in his 
creed. This is a self-indulgent state of mind alto- 
gether incompatible with real exaltation and purity 
of character. 

Then, further, men are liable to be deceived as to 
the fact of their own sincerity itself. " The heart is 
deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, 
who can know it." It is even possible for one whose 
whole character rests on duplicity to imagine himself 
a very paragon of sincerity. Nothing is more na- 
tural, more easy or more common than undetected 
duplicity. Men often condemn loudly in others 
traits that are offensively prominent in themselves, 
and even acts of which themselves are habitually 



60 DOCTRIXAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

guilty. I have heard incorrigible backbiters back- 
bite their neighbors for hackhiteing. I have heard 
the vainest men naively condemn other men for the 
same fault. Indeed, I am not sure but that vanity 
in another is particularly odious to a vain man. He 
thinks he hates this small vice prodigiously, but as it 
is a fact of his own consciousness he is well pleased 
with it . 

In like manner I have seen men full of little decep- 
tions of which they seemed unconscious. And, mark 
it well, if you find a man always asserting his own 
candor, you will find him a man of this class. " This 
man deceiveth himself." It would seem that he half 
wakes up to the consciousness of his own insincerity, 
and the bluster of a constant profession of candor is 
required to bolster his faith in himself. The deceit- 
fulness of the human heart is extremely subtle. It 
is a sort of volatile gas which it is difficult to detect 
or analyse. Nevertheless it is a very real thing, and 
often deadly. " Who can understand his errors? 
Cleanse thou me from secret faults." It has been 
said that if a man ever once says to himself, "I am 
an humble man," his humility is destroyed by the 
very fact — a perfect humility being incompatible with 
self-consciousness. Perhaps there is truth in this. 
At any rate, it seems scarcely safe for a man to make 
a parade of his virtues. The very pretension itself 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 61 

is unfavorable to the highest virtue, if not imcom- 
patible with it. Else why is it so often the case that 
the very virtues which pretentious men parade most 
noisily they are most deficient in? 

I do verily believe that it is more practicable — far 
more — to find the objective truth in religion than to 
assure one's self of absolute sincerity of motives in 
forming his creed. And the men who have a false 
creed are, after all, perhaps, not so candid as they 
and their apologists are fain to believe. If they were 
face to face with God the fact of their insincerity, 
latent in consciousness now, would be brought out 
into agonizing power. Perhaps this will be the cause 
of much of the dismay and anguish of final judg- 
ment. In fact, the less a man employs himself in 
complacent introspection, and the more he occupies 
his mind with God and his law, the more likely he 
will be to reach a high standard of sincerity. 

But allow that a man is sincere, perfectly so. This 
can not atone for all possible vices of belief arising 
from other causes. There may have been negli- 
gence and carelessness in forming opinions. There 
may have been willfulness. Want of sincerity at the 
outset may have been followed by settled conviction. 
Pride may have had a fatal influence in giving direc- 
tion to thought. You may admit a man's sincerity 
and yet find many reasons upon which to convict him 
of guilt in embracing a vicious creed. 



62 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

In fact, the more sincerely a man embraces a false 
creed the more deeply will his character be tainted 
by it. A false view of God and his law strongly 
held will put a man out of any proper adjustment to 
the divine government. 

Truth and right are absolute. They are not one 
thing to one man, and another thing to another man, 
according as each may see the matter. Tbey are 
ever the same, however false w r e may view .them. 
Some things there are, as the apostle teaches about 
days and meats, that have an accidental relation to 
questions of duty, and according as a man sees this 
or that significance in them they may be right or 
wrong to him. But it is not so with the essential 
truths of morality and religion. They abide. They 
are ever the same. Any false attitude toward them 
taken sincerely or insincerely is fatal. 

By what gracious agency God may visit those who 
have had no opportunity of knowing the truth, to 
whom the gospel has never been preached, we do not 
know. But when the gospel comes to a man fairly 
we are assured in the most solemn manner that a 
heavy guilt is incurred both by the rejection and the 
perversion of it. 

Perhaps, after all, a want of sincerity in the highest 
sense, a subtle species of latent duplicity, may be at 
the bottom of all fatal misbelief where the truth of 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 63 

the gospel is made known. The conditions of a right 
faith are certainly practicable, and the condemnation 
of perverse thought, according to holy Scripture, is 
as heavy as that of perverse living. In fact, as I 
have before shown, perverse thinking is at the bot- 
tom of wrong conduct. 

Can theft be supposed to be innocent in a man 
whose perverse creed esteems it a virtue ? Rather, is 
not his whole nature fundamentally vicious in virtue 
of its creed ? The more sincere the worse, if he may 
be considered sincere. 

The question, then, is not one of sincerity, but of 
conformity or nonconformity to the truth of God. 
A false attitude toward the truth of God is wicked 
and fatal. Arsenic is not nutritious to the man who 
may believe it to be so. The little child that believes 
a lighted candle to be a pretty, harmless plaything, 
and puts its fingers in the flame, is not saved from 
torture by its belief. No more certainly will phys- 
ical than moral truth assert itself against all wrong 
faiths. 

It is, then, of the utmost consequence that men 
should have correct views of truth. Especially is it 
important in matters of religion. This is the most 
vital of all truth, and error with respect to it is most 
damaging and fatal. A false creed in the mind is 
an abnormal condition, affecting the whole spiritual 
nature. 



64 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 



Complacency toward false creeds is no true charity, 
any more than complacency toward bad morals. The 
false creed is as bad as the wrong act. It is the duty 
of the Church, and especially of the ministry, to 
"contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to 
the saints," and to "drive out all erroneous and 
strange doctrines." 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 65 



m 

The old distinction between essentials and non- 
essentials in religion is unquestionably just. Many 
matters connected with religion have not been 
defined by holy Scripture. Wherever the Bible is 
silent we must be modest. Take, for example, the 
forms of ordinances. No specific regulations have 
been given. If one man believes that the Lord's 
Supper should be received kneeling, he may not 
condemn his brother who receives it in another post- 
ure. He who believes immersion in water to be the 
proper form of baptism may not condemn his brother 
who prefers pouring as the mode. The form of the 
ordinance has not been defined. It is inferred from 
certain facts by one man that immersion must be the 
mode. Another man, taking another class of facts, 
infers from them that pouring is certainly the mode. 
At any rate, the Holy Spirit has not specifically en- 
joined this mode or that. We are bound, therefore, 
to hold this question of modes among the non-essen- 
tials. If it were essential we should have received 
minute instructions with respect to it. 



66 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

There is a whole universe of speculative thought 
connected with religion. The relation of the human 
will to the divine sovereignty opens many questions 
which are purely speculative, and which revelation 
does not undertake to solve. Certainly, if they had 
any vital bearing upon the question of salvation, the 
plain statement of Scripture would have made the 
truth clear on every point. It is very easy for us to 
attribute a dogmatic, value to our own theories and 
conclusions. But where God has allowed liberty let 
no man dare to impose the yoke. 

There is no doubt that many men have gone astray 
in the wilderness of metaphysics. They adventure 
with perfect self-confidence into the depths of the 
forest and wander there for the rest of their natural 
lives. The trouble is, that they do not know even 
enough to find out that they are lost. 

But metaphysics has a connection with Christian 
doctrine, and a man greatly astray in his speculations 
will be liable to fall into doctrinal error, and that of 
the gravest kind. So long as his speculations are 
nothing more than speculations all may be well 
enough, and if he does blunder no great harm may 
be done. At least no man or Church has any right 
to condemn him where revealed light is wanting. 
But let him beware how he ventures, and see to it 
that he shall not transcend the just limits of specu- 



DOCTRINAL, INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 67 

lation and place himself in conflict with the teachings 
of the word of God. 

I suppose that in the whole region of metaphysics 
there is nothing more subtle, more abstruse, or more 
involved than Psychology. Yet no field of specula- 
tion is more tempting. The data are in conscious- 
ness. The inquiry has respect to our own nature. 
It is fascinating. We seem to ourselves to have firm 
footing. We theorize with perfect confidence until 
all at once, seeing the very same facts from another 
stand-point and in other relations, our over-confident 
conclusions are upset in a moment of time. All this 
intellectual by-play may be harmless enough so long 
as it refrains from any invasion of essential dogma. 
There may be almost infinite differences within per- 
missible limits, and these differences may have a bear- 
ing upon religion. Nor can we suppose that a blunder 
committed within these limits would have any fatal 
bearing on Christian character. Opinions here, very 
often, have no practical significance whatever. They 
do not bear upon character. In all such cases, no 
doubt, the fullest liberty may be enjoyed without 
evil effect. 

Many things even in the Bible may be variously 
understood without offense. He who holds the days 
of creation to be literal days of twenty-four hours 
would never think of condemning his neighbor as a 



68 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

heretic for believing the word to be metaphorically 
used for an indefinite period. Men may understand 
very variously the significance of the Mosaic rites 
without questioning each other's orthodoxy. No 
one would think of placing the brand of heresy upon 
another who should have a theory of the book of Job 
or of Ecclesiastes differing from his own. The sym- 
bolism of prophecy affords wide scope of various in- 
terpretation within limits that do not touch upon 
saving doctrine. Differences of opinion about the 

Millennium or the great Red Dragon can not be held 
to be of any special dogmatic importance. 

Or, to come nearer to a vital point, there may be 
differences of opinion with regard to the interpreta- 
tion of passages intended to give instruction in 
righteousness which may not be very important. 
If my neighbor thinks that the five foolish virgins in 
the parable of the Ten Virgins represent false pro- 
fessors, and that the parable itself was spoken as a 
warning to such, he is certainly mistaken. It is 
clearly an admonition to Christian watchfulness, as 
is stated in the place itself (Mat. xxv. 13 ), and the 
foolish virgins represent careless, unwatchful Chris- 
tians. Yet I will not regard my neighbor as a heretic 
for this unaccountable mistake of his. He knows 
that in many other places God's people are admon- 
ished to be watchful, and may himself be a very 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 69 

watchful Christian. God has graciously provided 
such ample instruction on all practical points that if 
a man does blunder on one passage he will be set 
right by others. 

Then great allowance must be made for mere logo- 
machy. After all, words are, in many cases, im- 
perfect vehicles of thought, and frequently men do 
not understand each other. After long and hot con- 
troversies it sometimes turns out that both parties 
are contending only for different ways of saying sub- 
stantially the same thing. 

Let it not be inferred from all this that there is no 
such thing as essential or well-defined dogma. There 
certainly is a range of doctrines which contains every- 
thing that is vital in religion. And in this range 
everything is positive and clear-cut. Everything 
stands out in full relief. The edges are well de- 
fined. The trumpet gives no uncertain note here. 
"The waj^faring men, though fools, shall not err 
therein." The way-marks are not dim nor uncer- 
tain. 

I have shown that character is the product of belief. 
From this it follows that that Christian doctrine that 
bears directly on the life must be vital. To err with 
respect to it is to suffer the greatest damage. 

The Scripture teaching as to our relations to God, 
as to the means of pardon and restoration to the 



70 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

divine favor, and all that bears directly upon expe- 
rience and duty, must be regarded as containing the 
all-important truth, with respect to which neither 
the church nor the individual can afford to be in 
error. Error here mars character. Error here places 
the soul into misadjustment with God and all spirit- 
ual truth. It blights character, and it is character 
that makes destiny. 

This is exactly the class of truth that God has de- 
fined with such care and simplicity that a " single 
eye " can not fail to discover it. It is " revealed to 
babes." 

In it is the Life. By it men come to the Life. 
Out of it they die. Its claims are supreme. Its sanc- 
tions are terrible. Alliance with it is peace and tri- 
umph. War upon it is defeat and dishonor; it is 
overthrow and ruin. 

In a very important sense the Church is the " pillar 
and ground of the truth." The gospel has been 
committed to her custody to preserve and propagate. 
Her responsibility is solemn. 

There has ever been in the world a class of men 
given to erratic thought, even in regard to those 
things which are plainest and most essential in re- 
ligion . They have often been influential . They have 
controlled large sections of Christendom. They 
have departed from the Bible and led many after the 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 71 

way of error. The people of God have had to con- 
tend earnestly for the faith. So it has been, so it 
will still be. The all-precious, saving truth, the 
Church will still have to maintain through storm 
and conflict. With large tolerance of speculative 
opinion the followers of Christ must maintain every 
essential truth at any cost. No vigilance, nor study, 
nor labor can be misplaced here. This most sacred 
trust is in their hands and the Master holds them re- 
sponsible. His honor and the salvation of souls are 
bound up in it. 

With the open Bible, accessible to all, and a quick 
Christian conscience maintained in the Church, the 
essential truth is secure. Many instances of aber- 
rant thought there will be, as there will be 'much evil 
of all sorts in this fallen world. There is no greater 
guarantee against depraved thought than there is 
against depraved feeling or depraved action. Hence 
there must be the utmost vigilance against error in 
doctrine as well as against sin in practice. 



72 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 



©topi** ^iflfottu 



I hate spoken of the just distinction between es- 
sentials and non-essentials in religion. Differences 
as to the forms of ordinances and in merely specu- 
lative opinions can not be regarded as of any vital 
consequence. These things do not belong to the 
essence of the Christian faith, but are rather acci- 
dents connected with it. The same may be said of 
forms of Church government. They are accidents 
of religion and not of the substance of it. 

But that which constitutes the very substance of 
Christian doctrine can not be discarded without es- 
sential damage to one's character. 

No one, for instance, can be a Christian, in the 
loosest sense of the term, unless he believes in the 
divine mission of Christ. It is that which a man 
believes in that indicates his religious status. Men 
are classified by their belief. They are Christians, 
Jews, Buddhists, Pagans, accordingly as they believe. 
The entire character of a man is determined by the 
matter and depth of his belief. He is as he believes. 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 73 

In such matters as are not of the essence of Chris- 
tianity, then, a man may believe this or that without 
any fatal effect upon his character. But when you 
come to the essentials the case is altogether changed. 
Misbelief here is fatal. It forfeits all just claim to 
Christian character. 

Even in the non-essentials it is very desirable to 
entertain correct opinions. It is much better to hold 
the truth than to have erroneous views in regard to 
any matter, even the most unimportant. There is 
great advantage in perceiving the exact truth in every 
speculative aspect of Christian doctrine. He who 
holds any error will suffer so much loss in eternity. 
It is not indifferent to me to have right or wrong* 
opinions in any region of Christian thought. There 
is misadjustment of the spiritual nature, in greater 
or less measure, arising from all misbelief ; and while 
in many points it may not be actually destructive of 
Christian character, yet in every case it is, and must 
be injurious. 

For proof and illustration of this see 1 Cor. iii. 
10-15 : " According to the grace of God which is 
given unto me as a wise master-builder, I have laid 
the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But 
let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. 
For other foundations can no man lay than that is 
laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, if any man build 



74 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, 
wood, hay, stubble ; every man's work shall be made 
manifest : for the day shall declare it, because it 
shall be revealed by fire ; and the fire shall try every 
man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work 
abide which he hath built thereupon he shall receive 
a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he 
shall suffer loss : but he himself shall be saved ; yet 
so as by fire." 

Christ is the foundation. All Christian character 
must rest on him. The true doctrine of Christ is the 
beginning point of spiritual life. Whatever is an es- 
sential part of the doctrine of Christ is fundamental, 
and must be present. It is at the base of the struc- 
ure, and there can be no building without it. Its 
absence is fatal. Anything else submitted in its 
place is fatal. " Other foundation can no man 
lay than that is ±aid, which is Jesus Christ." He 
who builds on this foundation will be saved. Even 
if he should use some bad material in the building, 
yet " he himself shall be saved." But let him know 
that it is of great importance to use good material in 
the whole structure, for all this work shall be tried 
by fire. 4 4 The day" — the day of judgment — shall 
reveal it by the test of fire. All perishable material 
shall be consumed. He who builds of " wood, hay, 
stubble, shall suffer loss" — the loss of his work; 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 75 

but he himself, having built on the true foundation, 
shall be saved, " yet so as by fire." But if his work 
is of a character that will stand the test of fire — if 
it be of gold, silver, precious stones, " he shall have 
a reward." He shall save his work. 

Non-essentials, then, are not unimportant; on the 
contrary, they are of great importance, though 
blunders with respect to them will not involve the 
loss of the soul. 

It will be seen by the drift of the plan that the 
builders referred to in this passage are ministers of 
the gospel. The work they use in building upon the 
foundation is the matter of their preaching. If in 
their teaching they lay the true foundation — if they 
deliver the essential doctrine of Christ, but bring in 
afterward false notions, they will be saved, but suffer 
the loss of all that is involved in their erroneous 
teaching. To err in essentials is fatal, to err in non- 
essentials is damaging. He who trifles with the 
" truth as it in Jesus" does so at his peril. He 
who is careless with respect to any truth connected 
with the doctrine of Christ, however remotely, will 
be so at heavy cost. 

For he who loses his work in eternity, though he 
himself be saved, will doubtless find it a great loss. 
It will be an eternal loss. The man whose work 
abides will find it to enter in the most vital way into 
his fortunes in the eternal world. 



76 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

While there is, then, a class of errors that maybe 
tolerated, there is another class God does not toler- 
ate, and which no true Church can allow to be held 
or disseminated among its people. The Church that 
allows error in the essential doctrine of Christ is 
false to Him. Such error is an assault upon Him. 
It destroys the foundations. It ruins souls. It de- 
feats the ends of the Incarnation. It strikes at 
Christ the Life. It is deadly. It is treason to the 
King of Glory. 

St. Paul was the ' 4 wise master-builder ' ' chosen 
of God to lay the foundation — that is, to define the 
doctrine of Christ. This doctrine contains the truth 
with respect to the Person of Christ, his offices, 
his work, and his relation to man. It contains, 
also, the truth with respect to man as he is related 
to the work of Christ. It contains the truth with 
respect to God and the law as these are revealed in 
Christ. 

Certainly all this is contained in the doctrine of , 
Christ, and is fundamental. All this is in the found- 
ation. 

These are precisely the points most fully elabo- 
rated by the Apostle Paul. He was the ' ' chosen 
vessel" for this very work. The reader of his Epis- 
tles sees the massive repose of this substructure of 
the Christian faith. The Everlasting Rock lies there 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 77 

to hold the Church in safety amidst the wreck of all 
other things. No man need miss the truth here. 
The light of God shines on it, and nothing but the 
perverseness of a proud heart can be blind to it. 

Not that the true doctrine is to be found alone in 
the epistles of this chief of the Apostles. It is 
found in every part of the New Testament, and 
largely in the Old. But certainly St. Paul was set 
for the defense of the gospel, eminently, in the defi- 
nition of doctrine. He has given the metes and 
bounds more definitely than any other of the sacred 
writers. 



78 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 



Of course, the existence of God is the first fact of 
all religion, and the true doctrine of God is the true 
religion. As the fact of the existence of God is the 
foundation of all religion, so is the fact of the incar- 
nation of the Son of God the foundation of the Chris- 
tian religion. 

The Incarnation is a movement of God toward 
man. It is a fact of the divine administration with 
respect to man. We are, therefore, to look for the 
occasion of it in man's nature or circumstances. 

The avowed object of His coming indicates a con- 
dition which the Incarnation was intended to meet. 
He came " to put away sin," " to destroy the works 
of the devil," " to seek and to save the lost." 

All this points to a deplorable fact in man's con- 
dition which occasioned the giving of the only be- 
gotten Son of God to take upon himself our nature. 

That fact was the fall. In the purity and happi- 
ness of his first estate man needed no Redeemer. 
He was under no condemnation. He was under no 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 79 

moral disability. He was at peace with his Creator. 
But in a black hour he listened to the tempter. He 
turned away his ear from God's word and gave it to 
the voice of Satan. He fell away from the dominion 
of God, and yielded himself to the dominion of the 
wicked one. The narration in the book of Genesis 
is free from all coloring and affectation. Like the 
account of the creation, the statement is plain and 
simple. In the days of his purity man lived in Eden. 
But when he fell aw^ay from God to follow Satan, 
God 4 4 drove him out" upon the ground cursed for 
his sake. Out upon the ground that had been cursed 
on his account his children were born. Since that 
time all his posterity have been under the taint and 
infection of his sinful nature. They " go astray as 
soon as they are born, speaking lies." 44 Foolish- 
ness is bound up in the heart of a child" — of all 
children. Every man must confess : 44 1 was born 
in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me." 

These are the 44 lost " whom Christ came 44 to seek 
and to save;" this is the 44 sin" JJe came to 4 4 put 
away;" these are the 44 works of the devil" that 
He 44 came to destroy." This was the condition 
into which the 4 4 first Adam" plunged us, and from 
which the 44 second Adam " came to deliver us. 

The depraved condition of man, then, is the start- 
ing point in Christian doctrine. Christ was given 



80 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

to be a Saviour, and the very word salvation con- 
templates a lost condition. 

/ say that the depraved condition of man is the 

STARTING POINT IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. So deeply 

is this true that the view a man takes of this first 
fact will shape his whole theology. Wrong thinking 
here, by a logical necessity, vitiates the entire creed. 
For the Christian theology is not a jumble of postu- 
lates accidentally brought together. It is a system 
of truth in which every postulate is vitally related to 
all the rest. The fact in which the whole system has 
its historical origin denied, the system loses all its 
coherency and meaning. That fact misconceived, 
the entire system takes a false coloring. No one 
doctrine is more vitally related to the whole Chris- 
tian theology than this. It is not difficult to under- 
stand that this must be so 

In point of fact, the history of doctrine shows that 
it is so. Heresy at this point loosens the whole 
fabric — disorganizes the system. The system of 
doctrine that i£ pronounced and clear-cut here is, 
evermore, of high evangelical tone. The system 
that is loose and equivocal here is, uniformly, out of 
joint and depraved at every vital point. I am sure 
that a candid examination of the history of creeds 
will show this to be the fact. Heresy at this point 
draws after it almost, if not quite, uniformly a denial 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 81 

of the divinity of Christ, of the doctrine of justifi- 
cation by faith, of the direct agency of the Holy 
Spirit in conviction and conversion, and of the wit- 
ness of the Spirit. 

There is no point to be more jealously guarded 
than this, therefore, on account of its vital impor- 
tance, and also, it may be added, on account of a 
native tendency in man to think well of his own 
character. The truth is unwelcome. No man likes 
to think meanly of himself or of his race. The 
value of such a clear statement of this doctrine as 
that in our Articles of Faith, carrying with it what- 
ever authority the Church has in the interpretation of 
Scripture, can scarcely be over-estimated. Though 
no one particular Church can claim infallibility, yet 
this definition, gathering up all that the Bible teaches 
on the subject, and uttering the evangelical thought 
of all ages, coming to us from our own trustedleaders 
in the Christian life, has kept the Church up to a tone 
of evangelical thought and spiritual experience that 
would scarcely have been uniform without it. It is • 

" Art. VII. Of Original or Birth- Sin, Original Sin standeth 
not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), 
but it is the corruption of the nature of every man, that natur- 
ally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is 
very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature 
inclined to evil, and that continually." 

This Subject involves the questions : 1, of the fact 



82 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

of a depraved condition in man ; 2, of the origin of 
it; 3. its extent; and 4, its degree. 

1. As to the fact of a depraved condition there is 
scarcely any difference. From the earliest ages hu- 
man thought has occupied itself with the 1 ' problem 
of evil," with a deep sense all the while of the pres- 
ence of moral evil, as well as physical. Humanity 
has ever felt itself to be sick — ay, sick unto death. 

The most casual observation of actual life, even 
upon the lowest standard of right, shows a fearful 
tendency to wrong-doing in the world, from child- 
hood to old age. There is a wide-spread penchant 
for evil 

The testimony of the Bible is direct and unequiv- 
ocal. The natural man knoweth not the things of 
God. Indeed, the Scriptures everywhere imply and 
state the fact. They go upon this supposition. 
The Bible history, after following man into sin, 
shows the divine administration ever after in the 
light of that fact. The Jewish history is a history 
of God's contest with sin. The Jewish ritual is rank 
with the smoke of s-acrifices for sin. The prophet- 
ical writings burn with denunciations of sin, and the 
Psalms wail with confession. The whole philosophy 
of the New Testament teaching rests upon this fact. 

2. As to the origin of it, the history of Genesis is 
conclusive. The first pair sinned before airy child 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 83 

had been born, so that our race was corrupt at the 
very fountain of it. That the consequences of this 
act did not terminate with themselves is clear from 
the fact that the curse upon the ground was perma- 
nent, and that an agonized child-bearing was entailed 
upon woman in all ages. 

But the Apostle Paul states the matter in terms 
that admit of no question : "By one man sin en- 
tered into the world, and death by sin." " Through 
the offense of one many are dead." The origin of 
our lost estate is fixed in the first transgression. 
Upon this point men may cavil, but no fair interpre- 
tation can question the plain effect of the Apostle's 
word. From that first moral pollution the entire 
stream of humanity is tainted. Sin "is naturally 
engendered of the offspring of Adam." 

3. As to the extent of it, it is universal. Every 
stream that flows from the corrupt fountain is cor- 
rupt. The universality of it is inevitable from the 
source of it. God "hath concluded all under sin." 
" They have all gone out of the way ; there is none 
that doeth good, no, not one." 

4. As to the degree of it there has been more ques- 
tion. 

Men are well disposed to believe that there is some 
good in human nature, and are ready to make the 
most of what are called the natural virtues, which 



84 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

appear often in men who make no pretension to piety. 
Many noble traits appear to be natural to some men. 

This is a very complex subject — entirely too large 
for any satisfactory examination in this article. But 
an intelligible conclusion may be reached by a more 
direct method. 

Imagine a man without any light of revelation or 
influence of the Holy Spirit, without any parental 
restraint in childhood, any fear of discredit among 
his friends for wrong-doing, or any dread of civil 
law ; what sort of natural character would you look 
for? His character would be perfectly natural to 
him in such a case. I think it not unlikely that he 
would be amiable to such as would be compliant to 
his wishes. So much as that appears among natural 
brute beasts. But, beyond question, he would be 
thoroughly savage, selfish, sensual. Such good feel- 
ing as he might have toward the companions of his 
sensual existence would be for below the level of re- 
ligious or even moral virtue. Judged by any spiritual 
standard he must be esteemed to be wholly depraved. 
Such is the natural man. 

As to unregenerate men in civilized and Christian 
communities two observations are to be made : 

First, if anything approaching a high standard of 
virtue may be claimed for them, they owe it to the 
restraining influence of grace. The grace of God 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM 85 

does much for unconverted men where the gospel is 
preached. It elevates them to a plane on which re- 
pentance is possible. The Comforter — the Holy 
Spirit — reproves them of sin, of righteousness, and 
of judgment. Indeed, I can not doubt that this work 
of the Spirit is realized even among the most aban- 
doned savages. 

Secondly, much that is praiseworthy m conduct 
arises out of motives which are thoroughly selfish. 
A man who has no sense of justice may pursue a 
course of upright dealing from the conviction that 
thus he will prosper better in the long run. He 
avoids social scandals because they are a bitter thing, 
He is generous because it makes him friends. Osten- 
tatious donations are made, even to the Church of 
God, because they will serve as advertisements and 
draw business custom. How much the current vir- 
tue of the world is to be discounted upon considera- 
tions of this kind w 7 ho can tell ? Who of us knows 
his own heart deeply enough to judge in his own 
case? 

But, so far as the scriptural doctrine of depravity 
is concerned, character is to be judged of in the light 
of God's perfect law. Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with thy whole heart, and soul, and mind, and 
strength — thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 
There is a universal consciousness among men of 
utter inability to attain to this standard. 



86 DOCTR1XAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

Besides this, no man can make the slightest move- 
ment in repentance without the Holy Spirit "pre- 
venting him that he may have a good will, and 
helping him when he has the good will." That is 
to say, in his natural state he is utterly without spir- 
itual strength. He is dead in trespasses and sins. 
A sort of wordly morality he may have, but of true 
spiritual purity and life he is wholly destitute. The 
slightest movement toward God must have its incep- 
tion in the gracious work of the Spirit. 

I do not hesitate to say man is totally depraved. 
He is full of wounds, and bruises, and putrifying 
sores, which have neither been bound up nor molli- 
fied with ointment. There is absolutely nothing in 
him that can stand the severity of the law of God. 
He is by nature the child of wrath. He is bound to 
the body of death. Sin reigns in his mortal body. 
Pride, and selfishness, and self-will, and lust, and 
unbelief are as natural to him as to breathe. There 
is no pure devotion to God until the work of the 
Spirit is wrought in us. "Of our own nature we 
are inclined to evil and that continually. The lan- 
guage of the Confession is not too strong, and it 
means total depravity. 

Whatever may be said of the "natural virtues," 
they do not reach the standard of spiritual purity. 
Even where they flourish they may co-exist with un- 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 87 

belief, and with a total disregard of God's claims. 
They are found coupled with the most inveterate 
wickedness toward God. The most profane men are 
often distinguished for certain high qualities. Yet 
of whatever constitutes piety toward God they are 
wholly destitute. 

If men are by nature wholly gone from God, why 
should any stickle at the phrase " total depravity?" 



88 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 



I have said that the fact of human depravity is 
the starting point of Christian doctrine, and that the 
view of that doctrine taken by any one determines 
the character of his theological system in its most 
vital points. This is unquestionably true, and it is 
a fact which invests this doctrine with the highest 
importance. There is no other one point around 
which all doctrine that is distinctively Christian more 
immediately clusters than this. It is in the Chris- 
tian system logically, a vital center. 

No less direct is its effect on experience than on 
doctrine. Loose and low views of the depravity of 
the human heart are rarely ever coupled with any 
deep religious experience. Nor do we have far to 
look for the reason of it. 

If sin is looked upon as a mere accident of indi- 
vidual life, it ceases to be that dreadful, inveterate, 
deep-seated fact of consciousness which in the light 
of the Scripture the doctrine of depravity is. Deep 
and vivid conviction of sin is, therefore, rarely found 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 89 

except in minds imbued with the Scripture view of 
the depraved and wicked state of the heart by na- 
ture. At first blush it might seem that the reverse 
would be the fact — that a sense of guilt would be the 
more keen and pungent as a man saw it to be his 
own act without an inveterate inherited condition 
leading to its commission. But, in point of fact, we 
know that such is not the case ; and what we know 
to be fact is rational — perfectly so — upon a deeper 
insight into the workings of the human heart 

Men are naturally proud of hereditary honors, and 
as naturally stung by a knowledge of hereditary in- 
famies. Even physical infirmities, and especially 
deformities that a man is born with, are felt to be a 
humiliation. We all know how sensitive men are on 
this point. By how much we are naturally below 
the average of human life, by so much we feel our- 
selves disparaged. So when we see sin to be an 
inborn deformity of our very being, and only then, 
do we bewail ourselves before God with a true peni- 
tential grief. I am a sinner, of an evil race, wholly 
gone from God from my very birth. I was born in 
sin. The vileness of my nature comes of a vile 
parentage. 

Even by common, worldly standards of morality, 
when the son of an honorable line of ancestry com- 
mits one dishonorable act, it is held to be proper to 



90 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

judge generously, and restore him upon fair trial to 
confidence and honor. But the habitual and hered- 
itary thief, the thief born of a thieving father and 
grown up in an atmosphere of crime, is held to be 
too deeply debased to allow any hope of honor. He 
is infamous in his very instincts. 

The true language of penitential humility is, "I 
am a sinner by nature and by practice. I am cor- 
rupt within. In me is no good thing. My fathers 
were sinful men. I am of an evil stock, helplessly, 
hopelessly evil. To original sin I have added actual 
transgression, and even against the grace that en- 
lightens me and gives me strength to repent, even 
against that I have sinned." 

If sin is regarded as simply a free act that may as 
freely be repented of and avoided, the sense of it is 
never very pungent. 

Besides all this, it is when the doctrine of deprav- 
ity is truly held that sin as an element of conscious- 
ness is properly estimated. The " motions of sin 
in the members" are then only seen to be a deadly 
plague. Then only the fountain of evil thoughts 
and corrupt affections and lusts is discovered to be 
the black and awful thing it is. The virus is felt in 
every vein, infecting every faculty, poisoning the 
very foundations of thought and feeling. 

All these facts enter into a true conviction of sin 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 91 

as so many elements of it. The feeling is one of 
guilt, and shame, and hopelessness. Nor is the 
sense of willful sin wanting. There have been sins 
enough against saving grace, against light and 
knowledge, to bring a keen sense of personal re- 
sponsibility. I am sinful in my nature, and have 
sinned willfully against the very grace which has 
provided the remedy. 

This clear view of a lost and guilty condition is 
the only proper foundation of Christian experience. 
This sense of the vileness and virulence of sin gives 
a deep tone to the whole Christian character. It is 
the condition of the most earnest aspirations after 
purity of heart. It is the condition in which Christ 
is welcomed with joy, and in which he appears as 
" chiefest among; ten thousand and altogether love- 
ly." It is the condition in which a man feels the 
unutterable need of Christ. Salvation, O, how wel- 
come ! A Saviour ! O, how precious ! 

The fact of our depravity received with an enlight- 
ened understanding and sincere conviction prepares 
the heart fully for all that is most vital in personal 
salvation, and the absence of such enlightened con- 
viction equally disqualifies it for any true perception 
of the riches of Christ. 

1. The heart imbued with a sense of its native 
corruption is prepared to welcome the divine Ke- 



92 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

deemer. God made manifest in the flesh, come with 
Almighty aid to rescue him from the bondage of Sa- 
tan, commands his deepest gratitude. In the fatal 
heritage of sin he hails the coming of the Great 
Deliverer. 

Until the prison doors have been tried and found 
barred there will be little reverence or care for Him 
who has come to open them and set the prisoners 
at liberty. Once the captivity is felt in all its hor- 
rible and hopeless import the soul will turn to the 
Omnipotent Love that holds the keys of hell and 
of death, and receive him with joy. 

2. The offices of the Holy Spirit in awakening and 
conversion are fully understood only when our native 
corruption is recognized. Only if we are dead in 
trespass and sins do we require this quickening 
agency. The gift of the Spirit, and the work as- 
signed him, are otherwise unintelligible ; and he who 
reads the Scriptures disbelieving the native deprav- 
ity of man can have no true insight into their teach- 
ings upon this subject: 

3. The doctrine of the New Birth is out of place 
in any creed that fails to receive in its full force the 
fact of human depravity. There is no such thing 
as being " created in Christ Jesus " if we are not by 
nature in a sinful state. There is no need that a 
vital change, wrought by the Holy Ghost, should 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 93 

take place in our essential being unless our very- 
nature is corrupt. But no fact is set forth with 
greater emphasis in the New Testament Scriptures 
than this : "Except a man be born again he can 
not enter into the kingdom of God.". "A man" — 
any man — must be born of the Spirit before he can 
have a spiritual nature or be in the kingdom which 
"is not of this world." " By nature we are children 
of wrath even as others," and only by being born 
again do we come into the likeness of God. If we 
are not depraved from our very birth, then from 
infantile innocency some might progress by natural 
effort into the highest spiritual condition. But no ; 
there is not in any man a spark of spiritual life until 
it is kindled in him by the Spirit of God. 

The doctrine of depravity — total depravity — and 
the doctrine of the new birth belong necessarily to 
the same system. Deny one, and, logically, you 
must deny both. Admit one and you must admit 
both. The necessity of the new birth is found only 
in the fact of our fallen and ruined condition. 
There remains in man no "vital spark" of spirit- 
uality to blaze up into power as fuel may be heaped 
upon it. Christ alone is the life, and his life is 
communicated by the Holy Spirit in the New Birth. 

This is not mere theorizing. As matter of fact, 
Churches that deny the doctrine of depravity, or 



94 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

even endeavor to soften it, have ever held vague 
language about the new birth. They have no real 
conception of it as a fact of consciousness. Expe- 
rience goes out of sight in their public teaching. 
Religion comes to be a mere form. The Church is 
full of unhappy examples. 

4. The doctrine of justification by faith goes 
along also with this doctrine of the fall and its re- 
sults. 

The absolute futility and insufficiency of all works 
done in the unregenerate state can never be seen 
except this fact be admitted. Pharisaism is defensi- 
ble if Pelagianism be true. Man may do acceptable 
works before God if he is not wholly corrupt. But 
if he is, then there can be no meritorious character 
in anything he does. The interposing merit of Christ 
must form the only ground of his acceptance with 
God. " Not of works, lest any man should boast. " 
"It is by faith that it might be by grace." The 
merit of Christ is accepted by faith. Faith, in the 
very nature of it, disclaims all merit, and accepts 
the atoning sacrifice of Christ as the only ground of 
our acceptance with God. Because we were " with- 
out strength, in due time Christ died for us." 

The doctrine of faith, then, is grounded upon the 
helpless depravity and corruption of the soul. In 
fact, the whole system of grace goes back to this. 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 95 

It will be found, indeed, that loose views of this 
doctrine are often followed by a denial of the vica- 
rious character of the sufferings of Christ, and a low 
conception of the turpitude of sin. All that is 
deepest and truest in Christian thought and feeling 
suffers. 

Nor is it unfrequent that the divinity of Christ is 
denied by those who are in heresy on this subject. 
Indeed, I am not sure but this is almost uniformly 
the fact. If man is still able to help himself he does 
not require an Almighty arm to lift him up. If sin 
is not so deadly a thing, why should a divine Suf- 
ferer take it upon himself for us? So it is, that a 
departure from the truth of Christian doctrine at the 
starting point will lead the wanderer quite astray. 
He will miss the very substance of the faith. Di- 
vergence here is fatal. 

A particular individual may miss the truth at one 
point and not perceive the logical direction of his 
own thought. But where the error makes headway 
amongst men, it will also make headway on the line 
of its own proper logical bearings. There is no 
point, therefore, more jealously to be guarded than 
this of which this article treats. 

We are all gone astray like lost sheep ; we are 

" Sprung from the man whose guilty fall 
Corrupts his race and taints us all.' 7 



96 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

There is no help in us. Our help is in Christ 
alone. Through him, by the ministration of the 
Holy Spirit, we are 6 'made new creatures." ' 6 He 
is our life." " He alone is our salvation." 

Still another aspect of this topic demands consid- 
eration. 



i 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 97 



I can not think that there is actual heresy among 
us upon the doctrine of human depravity. But that 
there are disturbing tendencies of thought in regard 
to it there is some reason to suspect. I do not by 
any means apprehend a doctrinal cataclysm, yet I 
have some fear that individual minds may overstep 
the boundary of truth. 

The disturbing tendency originates, as I think, in 
two causes, mainly. These causes in themselves are 
harmless enough. Great truths are embodied in 
them both. But rushing on eagerly in the direction 
of a single truth many men plunge, ere they are 
aware of it, into absolute falsehood. 

The first of the two causes I refer to is the discus- 
sion of the nature and functions of the will. Culti- 
vated intellect is everywhere in insurrection against 
the dogma of necessity. Man is proudly asserting 
his freedom. The battle is won on every field. 
There is scarcely a voice raised in the domain of let- 
ters in the defense of fatalism. Whatever a man's 



98 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

theological creed may be, he holds the proper free- 
dom of will. He may hold it with reservations and 
explanations in the interest of an adverse theology. 
But still he asserts the essential fact. 

There is no subject the metaphysics of which is 
more tempting than this, nor any of which the met- 
aphysical intricacies are more complex or difficult 
There are few men who can walk safely in this laby 
rinth. There is not a man on earth, there never was 
one, nor ever can be, whose conclusions may be im- 
plicitly trusted. Yet there are multitudes who im- 
agine themselves capable <,i the explanation. Many 
half-educated men dogmatize here without hesitation. 
They discover some accidental cobweb, and taking it 
to be the veritable clew, follow it around two or three 
angles, and come back exultant. They have mas- 
tered the mazy network and know it all ! The Bible 
may be mistaken, but their psychology never ! 

No man is more certain to fall into error than he 
who is self-confident. Nor is any man safe from 
blunders amid the intricacies of the metaphysical 
labyrinth. I do not mean that all philosophical in- 
quiry is necessarily misleading, but I certainly do 
mean that no man can, at the end of an abstruse and 
elaborate course of speculations, rest in his conclu- 
sions with the assurance of faith. I mean that specu- 
lation can not stand as against the plain declarations 
of Scripture. 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 99 

One thing was settled by me — settled for myself 
finally — that the Bible is the Word of God. From 
it there is no appeal. All speculation is at an end 
when it has spoken. 

If, for example, from man's freedom my analysis 
should lead me to discredit the Pauline doctrine of 
depravity, I should very readily suspect my method, 
but never for a moment the truth of the inspired 
statement. Nothing could be more likely than that 
my analysis should be at fatlt, while it is a settled 
fact that the averments of holy Scripture are all 
true. My philosophy is open to review, but the Bible 
is not. 

True, indeed, my interpretation of the Bible may 
be open to review, also. But the candid understand- 
ing of plain writing is rarely erroneous — it is not 
one-tenth so likely to be erroneous as the result of 
a review in the interest of a favorite philosophy. 
When a man begins to seek interpretations of plain 
Scripture that may be in harmony with a system to 
which he is committed, he is precisely in the mental 
condition least favorable to the perception of truth. 
Nothing more thoroughly warps the understanding 
than the prejudice of opinion. A revision of plain, 
common-sense interpretations with a view to get such 
a meaning out of the text as may correspond with 
the results of our speculations is dangerous in the 
extreme. 



100 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

The most ingenious sophistry is requisite to elim- 
inate the fact of hereditary depravity out of the 
Scriptures. Straightforward men of good sense and 
learning receive it inevitably. No man can doubt it, 
if he does candidly believe the Bible to be the Word 
of God, except upon an effort of an ingenious inter- 
pretation. These ingenious efforts of interpretation 
are always suspicious, especially when they are made 
with an eye to some private theory. 

Of the freedom of the will as a general fact in 
Psychology, I have no doubt. But man's ability 
to be holy upon the motion of his own will alone is 
a doctrine against both Scripture and experience. 
He is not able to accomplish this until he is enlight- 
ened and aided by the Holy Spirit. A paralysis of 
his spiritual nature has resulted from the fall, from 
which he can by no means recover himself by any 
exertion of his unaided powers. The helping grace 
of the Spirit is not of the nature of mechanical force 
to compel a man to the service of God. It elevates 
him to the plane of freedom, simply, and leaves the 
responsibility of choice upon him. 

My admiration of the Articles of Faith in our Book 
of Discipline grows upon me. On this point, of the 
freedom of man, as it is related to his religious char- 
acter, the statement is marvelously condensed, and 
yet most satisfying and accurate. It is : 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 101 

"Art. VIII. Of Free Will. The condition of man after the 
fall of Adam is such that he can not turn and prepare himself, 
by his own natural strength and works, to faith, and calling 
upon God; wherefore we have no power to do good works, 
pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by- 
Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and work- 
ing with us when we have that good will." 

Grace, not compulsory, but prevenient and help- 
ing, is an essential condition of ability to please God. 

He who takes the absolute freedom of will for 
granted as a universal postulate misses the fact egre- 
giously, and will find his psychology at war with both 
fact and Scripture in a thousand instances. No 
phenomenon is more common than infirmity of will 
arising out of abnormal moral conditions. The 
limitation of freedom in actual life I can not discuss 
here. I have treated of it somewhat, though by no 
means exhaustively, in " The Work of Christ." 

But the tendency is apparent in some quarters, 
from the stand-point of the freedom of the will to 
drift away from the truth. Freedom, it is affirmed, 
is a fact of consciousness. So it is, indeed. So also 
is the infirmity of will, its actual imbecility in un- 
aided spiritual efforts, a fact of consciousness. 
46 When I would do good, evil is present with me," 
4 6 The good that I would I do not — the evil that I 
would not, that I do/ " O, wretched man that I 
am, who shall deliver me from the body of this 
death?" Who is there that does not find in his own 



102 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

experience a response to all this ? If there be any 
they must be such as have never been quickened 
sufficiently to feel their chains. Sin has never be- 
come loathsome to them. They have never strug- 
gled for life. 

Men are able to repent simply from the fact of the 
manifestation of the Spirit to them. Otherwise they 
are hopelessly lost and " without strength.'' 

The Arminian theology harmonizes all the phe- 
nomena of consciousness on this point, and also 
brings them into harmony with the Scriptures. He 
who goes from the fact of free-will into Pelagianism 
ignores a large portion of the phenomena of con- 
sciousness, and many plain statements of the Word 
of God. The Eighth Article, quoted above, states 
the matter with the greatest accuracy. 

The second fact out of which a disturbing tendency 
of thought has arisen on the doctrine of depravity 
is one most creditable to the Church of our day. I 
allude to the quickened conscience of the Church 
upon the duty of training children, and bringing 
them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. 

It is a lamentable proof of the fact of the fall and 
the universality of its effect that, along with every 
good movement in human society, some incidental 
evil is sure to arise. Along with this new impulse 
in the Church, so exalted and pure, have arisen ques- 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 103 

tionable views of the spiritual condition of infants — 
views that tend to loosen and demoralize thought 
upon the subject of the fall. So far as I know, they 
are not well defined, nor do I believe there is any- 
conscious departure from the true doctrine. But 
postulates have been made in terms which, though 
unconsciously to the authors, are in the tone of 
erroneous teaching, and on the line of logic that ends 
and must end in Pelagianism. 

That there will be any permanent divergence from 
evangelical teaching at this point, and arising out of 
this cause, I have not the slightest fear. The good 
sense and piety of those engaged most heartily in 
labors that look to the salvation of children will save 
them from any fatal departure from truth. If, in the 
ardor of speculation in early manhood, the pendulum 
of thought oscillates threateningly, it will soon set- 
tle into the attitude of truth by the inevitable gravi- 
tation of faith. The sincerity of a deep-felt convic- 
tion of the truth of the Word of God, and the light 
of their own experience and of the Spirit of Grace, 
will fix them upon the center. Years will bring 
them a deeper insight, and many fallacies that seem 
to them now to be unquestionable truths will waste 
away like the rime under an April sun. 

But the relation of children to the covenant of 
grace and to the visible Church must excite much 



104 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

interested inquiry at this period of Sunday-school 
activity. It is vitally connected with the fact of the 
fall and the doctrine of depravity, and I can not with 
propriety ignore it in this connection. The most 
that I hope to do is to guard the Church against any 
latent tendency which may be betraying itself toward 
fatal " error in doctrine." 

The Church must put forth all her strength for 
the salvation of the young. She must not relax, 
but augment her zeal and her labors. But she must 
do it with a full and clear perception of the nature 
of the task. She must not " daub with untempered 
mortar." She must not treat a cancerous sore with 
such remedies as might heal a fresh wound. 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 105 



If original sin is " engendered of the offspring of 
Adam," of course infant children came into the 
world under the taint of it. But many curious ques- 
tions arise out of their relation to the New Covenant. 
Some seem to infer that through Christ they are 
relieved at their very birth of the depravity which 
otherwise they had inherited from Adam. So far 
as I can understand it, those who hold this view 
consider infants as being in fact delivered both from 
the curse and taint of sin — both from guilt and de- 
pravity. The theory seems to be, that they are 
relieved of all the direct consequences of the fall 
until they commit actual sin. 

From all which it is inferred that children may be 
so brought up as never to fall into sin, and never to 
forfeit their innocency. Upon this theory it must 
be held possible for men to pass through life fault- 
less. If the atonement puts each individual exactly 
on the footing of Adam before the fall, then each 
individual has the same power to pass his probation 
without the commission of sin that Adam had. 



106 DOCTRINAL, INTEGRITY OF METHODISM . 

To this theory there are several fatal objections. 
It is clear that the child is not on the same footing 
with the first man at his creation. That his rela- 
tions to the law and government of God are as ad- 
vantageous in the end, and with respect to his own 
destiny, I do not for a moment doubt. But that in 
every respect his attitude is the same as Adam's was 
at the creation, is certainly not true. 

1. There is a vast difference of intellectual capacity 
and knowledge. The infant at first has no knowl- 
edge, and his capacity to acquire knowledge increases 
very slowly. In the first man knowledge seems to 
have been intuitive, as appears in the familiar in- 
stance of his giving names to the beasts as they 
came before him. The whole narrative implies a 
high degree of intelligence in the first man. 

2. He was in intelligent intercourse with God. 
He conversed directly with his Maker. This shows 
an elevation of spiritual nature in most striking 
contrast with a lLtle child. In the child the physi- 
cal nature is strongly ascendant, the spiritual being 
dormant. 

3. The first man was not under the doom of physi- 
cal death until after he fell. 46 Unto dust shalt thou 
return" was not spoken to him until after he had 
sinned. Not until after that was the tree of life 
guarded from his approach. 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 107 

4. The child now inherits the earth under the 
curse which doomed it to bring forth thorns and 
briers, yielding bread reluctantly to the sweat of 
man's brow. 

I give these only as specimens of the differences 
between the first man before he sinned and the little 
child before it falls into conscious transgression. 
They will serve to show how vast is the disparity. 
The Atonement does not place the new-born babe 
just where Adam stood. The Cross may place him, 
upon the whole, and with respect to final results, in 
as advantageous a relation. But at first he is under 
many painful and humiliating disabilities. He is in 
a depraved condition. 

As to the question, whether a child might attain 
to manhood and pass through his probationary term 
without sin, we are perfectly safe in saying that none 
ever do. 6 4 If we say that we have not sinned, we 
make Him a liar, and his word is not in us." The 
plague spot never fails to appear. 

It is a great mistake to suppose that a child 
growing up may glide gently and easily into a holy 
life. Cross-bearing and self-denial are in every case 
essential incidents of Godly living. Natural propen- 
sities are never developed into holiness. They must 
be overcome. " The old man" must be " crucified 
with the affections and lusts." The 4 ' blank paper " 



108 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

theory is contradictory alike of Scripture and expe- 
rience. Our very nature is infected, and from 
childhood up " the leprosy lies deep within. 99 

But are not such as die in infancy saved? No 
one doubts that. Then, when is the dying infant 
regenerated ? 

I do not know, and for a very good reason. The 
Bible has given no definite information on the sub- 
ject. But there will ever be a class of eager persons 
in the world who will never be content to let those 
questions rest upon which God has not spoken. His 
silence seems to provoke their curiosity. The ques- 
tion, as to when a child dying in infancy becomes 
regenerate, is of no practical importance whatever. 

Two things are clear. One is, that those who die 
in infancy are saved ; the other, that all who reach 
maturity early, betray depraved propensities. There 
are no exceptions. The strong statement of Scrip- 
ture is scarcely hyperbolical : " They go astray as 
soon as they are born, speaking lies." 

But you object that our Lord said, 4 4 Of such is 
the kingdom of God." Certainly, then, they are 
not depraved, for the Savior would not have said 
that the kingdom of God was constituted of such as 
were depraved. 

Upon this I remark, first: That no isolated pas- 
sages are to be so interpreted as to contradict the 
entire tenor of Scripture doctrine on any point. 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 109 

This is a uniform law of exegesis. 

In all those passages which treat directly of hu- 
man nature at large, and as it is related to the fall, 
and as it appears from our very birth, the fact of our 
native depravity is affirmed with a formality and 
emphasis that can not be denied nor questioned. 
Now, what our Savior said of children when he was 
treating of other matters is not to be interpreted to 
contradict the formal and uniform statements of the 
word of God where it treats immediately of this ques- 
tion. 

The Savior would rebuke the worldly and vain 
ambition of His disciples. He sets a little child in 
their midst — a little child who knows absolutely 
nothing of such schemes. Here is one trait in the 
child which may illustrate a fact in the kingdom of 
God for instruction and rebuke to His wrangling 
disciples. In another case, parents bring their chil- 
dren to Christ, and are rebuked by his disciples, as 
if it were an impertinence to ask his attention to 
these 6 < crying babies . ' ' But He , " much displeased' ' 
to see how His disciples disparage the little children, 
bestows on them the most tender attention, and 
says, "of such is my kingdom." Far be it from 
me to overlook them, for among them I find the 
very constituency of my kingdom. My blood is 
shed for them, so that if they die before the com- 



110 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

mission of actual sin they shall be saved. Their 
angels behold the face of my Father. 

There are, indeed, several traits in little children 
that most strikingly illustrate the Christian charac- 
ter. For instance, they are single-minded in pur- 
suing their purposes. The trouble with us in 
serving God often is, that we do not pursue His 
service with a single eye. We adjust our conduct 
not wholly to the will of God, but partly to the 
expectations of our acquaintances. Or the attrac- 
tion of wealth draws us into divergence from the 
right line of duty. The little child whose heart is 
set upon some object pursues it without any con- 
sciousness of observation. There is no more strik- 
ing or beautiful illustration of the single eye with 
which the Christian is expected and commanded to 
follow Christ. 

The feeling of confidence and love which a little 
child has toward its father illustrates more nearly 
than any thing else on earth, perhaps, the true feel- 
ing of the children of God toward him, the heav- 
enly Father. 

But underneath all this is the fact of spiritual 
depravity. These beautiful natural traits do not 
imply spiritual purity. There are many beautiful 
natural affections even among the lower orders of 
animals. But this is something very different from 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. Ill 

a heart right with God. When a man has the true 
child- feeling, the genuine filial spirit toward God, 
he is a Christian. Yet, nevertheless, so little has 
the child himself this feeling toward God, that it is 
only by a slow and laborious process that he comes 
to know or care anything about God. In fact, 
when he does come to know of God and his will, 
he becomes also conscious of deep natural propensi- 
ties adverse to his character and claims. 

When the child comes to undertake a life of holi- 
ness, as he approaches maturity and gains some in- 
sight into the nature of God and His law, he finds 
both his own nature and surrounding conditions 
against the effort. He is himself depraved, and his 
life is cast upon depraved conditions. " The world 99 
and 4 4 the flesh" are equally in league with 6 6 the 
devil." 

So far from the nature of the child being pure to 
begin with, and as a basis of spiritual development, 
he is to find when he comes to some intelligent per- 
ception of the Christian life that self-denial is a 
prime condition of following Christ. Christian 
virtue is not the spontaneous outgrowth of " infan- 
tile innocency." Very far from it. The old man 
is there, to be crucified, with the affections and lusts. 

True, there are facts in connection with childhood 
which render proper Christian training very effect- 
ive. 



112 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM . 

The sensibilities are acute, and through them 
much may be effected. The young mind is credu- 
lous, and maybe pre-occupied with the truth of the 
gospel. Indeed, if the Christian parent makes 
proper use of his advantage he will intrench the 
truth deeply and almost unassailably in the child's 
mind. Then there is the power and authority of 
the parent over the child. Where parental authority 
is properly established and maintained all the early 
years of life are wielded by the parent. In the 
most powerful manner the child may be thus turned 
and impelled toward a holy life. 

The Christian training which goes upon the sup- 
position that the child is good enough without being 
born again, that proceeds upon the idea of inbred 
purity instead of inbred sin, may make formalists, 
but it can never make true Christians. The trans- 
forming power of the Holy Spirit must be felt in the 
heart. Nothing short of this is to be taken for true 
religion. 

I have no doubt that children properly trained 
may often be converted at so early an age that they 
may not be able to analyse the acts of consciousness, 
nor to know the character of the emotions of the 
new life. Such persons are often perplexed in after 
years by the clear-cut and often startling experience 
of those who had grown to maturity in sin. Yet no 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 113 

matter how early the work may be accomplished, 
this work of the Spirit must be done. 

The question is often asked, may a child be so 
trained as never to come into actual exposure to the 
wrath of God — never to lose infantile justification. 
May he not at the instant of sufficient intelligence 
exercise faith and be converted, thus passing imme- 
diately out of the state of infant irresponsibility into 
intelligent Christian life? I doubt not that this is 
possible — nay, that it is often realized. But none 
the less is the child born again at that moment than 
if the work had been delayed until he was fifty 
years old. 

All Christian experience refers to a depraved con- 
dition. It is salvation realized in consciousness. It 
is deliverance from a sinful state. The child pass- 
ing into the period of responsibility must be saved. 



i 



114 DOCRTINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 



The religious instruction of children must have 
the depravity of their nature fully in view. It is not 
enough to put them upon a course of religious ob- 
servances and forms. They must have a distinct 
view of the nature of their wants. 

The very fact of their baptism contemplates their 
need of the regenerating agency in the Holy Spirit. 
The baptismal prayer seeks it in their behalf. Bap- 
tism itself is the outward, formal expression of the 
inward cleansing wrought by the Holy Ghost. Unless 
the subject of it is in need of this, the ordinance is 
wholly without significance. 

I may say, in passing, that I have met with some 
persons who were in perplexity about the baptismal 
prayer in the service for the baptism of infants, as if 
it contemplated their regeneration in the moment of 
baptism. The ritual is not open, upon a fair con- 
struction of the language, to this interpretation, 
though it must be admitted that it is liable to popu- 
lar misapprehension, and I think some modification 
is, therefore, desirable. But an examination of the 
terms used will show that the prayer does not look 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 



115 



to regeneration as taking place simultaneously with 
the act of baptism. Besides this, it is to be inter- 
preted in accordance with the uniform and universal 
teaching of the Church on this point. It is known 
publicly on all sides that our Church condemns and 
repudiates the fiction of baptism at regeneration. 

But it is right to pray for a child that " he may 
be regenerated and born again," and eminently 
proper to ofler this prayer at the time when he is re- 
ceiving the rite which is significant of the fact. All 
that is done for a child in the way of Christian train- 
ing looks to his regeneration, and, therefore, pro- 
ceeds upon the supposition of a depraved condition. 
But it does not follow that all that is clone looks to 
his being made actually regenerate at the time of 
doing it, and before he is at an age to exercise faith. 
In the event of his death before he reaches that age, 
the whole matter of his regeneration, of course, rests 
with God. We may not know when or how the 
gracious effect is realized. But w r e may be well as- 
sured that being involved in the effects of the fall 
without their own agency, they will be saved without 
any condition being required. 

It is a false sentiment that feels disturbed and un- 
easy about children who die unbaptized. Sometimes 
people become feverishly anxious to have their chil- 
dren baptized when they are in immediate danger of 



116 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

death. This betrays a wrong view of the ease. It 
is not the children that die in infancy, but those that 
live to maturity that are benefited by baptism. It 
must be a pleasant reflection to parents, indeed, when 
their children die, that they were negligent in no 
duty toward them. But it is wrong to suppose that 
the child is any more secure or in any higher state, 
on account of its having been baptized. 

The true significance of baptism in the case of 
children, is found in the fact that it is the beginning; 
of a course of Christian training. The child is set, 
by parental authority, in " the way he should go," to 
be afterward " trained up " in that way. How can 
a child be ' < trained up in the way he should go," 
unless he is put in that way by those who are re- 
sponsible for him in his helpless infancy? The way 
he should go is in the church, and among the peo- 
ple of God. Baptism places him formally in con- 
nection with the church. There he finds himself so 
soon as he can know good and evil. He is there 
upon parental authority, and if he leave his place it 
must be by his own perverseness. But he is there, 
not to be told that salvation is a necessary effect of 
his baptism and Church-membership. He is there 
to learn that he must be born again, and to be in the 
best possible circumstances to aid him in obtaining 
the gift of God. He is < 6 matriculated in the school 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 117 



of Christ" to learn of him. The first thing he 
learns is the fact of his own lost condition, and that 
the Son of God has come into the world to save him. 

The more distinctly he sees, and the more deeply 
he feels the evil of his lost condition, the more eagerly 
will he desire deliverance. He is not to be taught 
that he is a very pure little creature, and now has 
only to live right in order to please God, but, on the 
contrary, that all his evil tempers and unholy de- 
sires grow out of an evil and wicked heart, and that 
nothing but the mercy of God can save him. When 
the sense of sin is formed, the need of the Saviour 
will be felt. 

The effort to bring a little child to Christ inde- 
pendent of this sense of sin is futile. It is philo- 
sophically the condition of receiving Christ as the 
Saviour. The Saviour can be consciously received 
only by the conscious sinner. As to the question 
whether the child may receive Christ at the very mo- 
ment of passing the line of accountability, I should 
say certainly it is possible. The dawning sense of 
sin certainly antedates the beginning of accountabil- 
ity, and a well-instructed child may safely be consid- 
ered as being prepared to receive Christ at the first 
moment of accountability. But he is so only on 
condition that a sense of his fallen estate has been 
previously awakened in him. Children will not be 



118 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 



brought to Christ by any course of training which 
ignores their sinful condition. I use the word sinful 
knowing well the just distinction between sin in the 
fullest sense of the word, and involuntary depravity ; 
the difference between what is technically called 
44 original sin 99 and 44 actual sin." The involuntary 
corruption of the nature of an infant is far from 
being the same as the wicked act of the mature man. 
Nevertheless, it is a state of moral corruption, and 
is properly called 44 original or birth-sin. " It is a 
sinful condition. 

It is to be greatly regretted that so many amongst 
us neglect the baptism of their children. 44 What 
good will come of it?" they ask. 

Let your child know that by parental authority he 
is committed to the service of God ; that in faith and 
prayer he was offered up to the Saviour in the day of 
helpless infancy. The effect can not but be most 
wholesome. If he refuse to serve God, let him un- 
derstand that he repudiates the covenant made for 
him by his father and his mother. The unbaptized 
child, if he lives in irreligion and out of the church, 
simply goes on in the way his life began. He follows 
out the logic of the position his parents gave him. 
The baptized child, on the contrary, if he live in irre- 
ligion and out of the church, must do so by a volun- 
tary withdrawal of himself from the advantageous 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 119 

position in which his father has placed him. He is 
shut up to a Christian course by parental authority, 
and he must repudiate that or lead a Christian life. 
The baptism of a child places him in a position that 
gives immense influence to Christian training. Upon 
it is based every appeal to filial duty and feeling in 
favor of early consecration to God. Tell a child, at 
the right moment, that his father and mother gave 
him to God, and lovingly bound him by their au- 
thority to be a Christian, and you shall see the effect 
it will produce. 

Then it places him in a relation to the church which 
gives it great authority with him. He feels that he 
is identified with it, and committed to a life of piety 
and prayer. He may not dishonor the church. He 
feels that the church is his home, and that he is not 
of the world. That is, upon the supposition that 
the proper instruction has followed upon his baptism. 
In this relation to the church he is ' ' brought up in 
the nurture and admonition of the Lord." Nor can 
this be done in the case of the unbaptized child who 
feels that he has no place in the house of God, or 
with the people of God. 

But sometimes we are asked, what is the relation 
of baptised children to the church ? Are they actu- 
ally members or are they not? If they are mem- 
bers, then why not give them the sacrament of the 
Lord's Supper? 



120 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

It seems to me that a little good common sense 
ought to enable any one to answer these questions. 
The membership of infants in the church is very- 
much the same as the citizenship of minors in the 
state. The minor has many important advantages 
of citizenship, and is under many of its obligations. 
Yet there are important franchises which he can not 
be allowed to enjoy. He has not the requisite knowl- 
edge and discretion. For the exercise of them he 
must wait till he is of age. Until that time his cit- 
izenship is incomplete. 

So with the children of the church. They are 
members. They are entitled to, and do actually en- 
joy many great advantages in the church. They are 
in covenant relations with God. But there are fran- 
chises of the church to be enjoyed, in the very nature 
of them, only by the conscious believer. They are 
not appropriate to the infant. The sacrament of the 
Lord's Supper, observed " in remembrance of him," 
can be participated in only by such as are of riper 
years and have actual faith. The baptized child has 
actual membership in the church, but his member- 
ship is incomplete. 

At what age may membership be consummated ? 
The -Lord has not said ; nor has the church pre- 
scribed the exact age. Much depends on the natural 
intelligence of the child, and more on the thorough- 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 121 

ness of Christian training. There must be an ade- 
quate perception and deep sense of the solemnity, 
the binding charapter, and sacredness of the vows to 
be taken. There must be, also, some comprehension 
of fundamental doctrines. With this there must be 
a deep-felt and full purpose of consecration to God. 

I should think that few ought to be received under 
ten years of age, and it is doubtful if in any case it 
should be done under eight. " Do not repress the 
children," some say. Certainly not. But they are 
in the church already. All I mean is, that they 
ought not to come to its highest franchises till they 
have some proper conception of the greatness of the 
benefit. Thev ought not to be hurried forward so 
summarily as to destroy or prevent a salutary im- 
pression of the sacredness of the privileges to which 
the consummation of their membership introduces 
them. Nor ought they to take the vows and assume 
the obligations of membership until they are of suffi- 
cient age to know what they do, and so well instructed 
as to take the step in the right spirit. 

But the whole matter must be at the discretion of 
parents and pastors. 

The church, I fear, fails in its duty toward child- 
dren. They are not made to feel as they ought, 
either the privileges or obligations of their connec- 
tion with the church. Many of them scarcely know 
the fact that they are members. 



122 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

To make them feel the full import of their mem- 
bership is an important fact in training them — in 
bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of 
the Lord. 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 123 



The Wesleyan teaching, while it introduced no 
new doctrine, brought into new prominence and de- 
livered with new emphasis four predicates, all of them 
having immediate reference to our personal salvation. 
The first is, that salvation is free for all ; the second, 
that it is attainable now; the third, that it is to be 
consciously enjoyed ; the fourth, that it provides for 
our cleansing from all sin. In other words, that sal- 
vation is free — present — conscious — full. 

The new birth and the witness of the Spirit are 
the great facts of personal religion as given in the 
teaching of the New Testament. The two facts dis- 
tinguish it broadly from ritualism on the one side 
and from rationalism on the other. It is not a mat- 
ter officially managed by the church, nor are its 
phenomena the mere result of natural processes. 
It is the effect of the power of God realized in the 
soul. It is a new creation, the product of the pres- 
ent and felt energy of the Holy Ghost in the soul. 
That nothing short of this is salvation is distinctly 



124 DOCTHINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

recognized m Methodist teaching. The testimony 
has been the same from the first. There is no hesi- 
tation, nothing equivocal on this point. The teach- 
ing of the pulpit has been sustained by the experience 
of the Church. The class-room and the love-feast 
have given no uncertain utterance. Salvation is a 
felt fact in the soul. God owns his people, and gives 
them assurance of his love. 

If the faith of any is weak, if they consistently 
and earnestly seek God's face and yet remain in 
darkness, the Methodist Church has always offered 
them an asylum. It does not bar them from the 
sacraments, but, on the contrary, urges them forward 
in the discharge of every duty and the enjoyment of 
every privilege . It encourages their hesitating faith . 
It exhorts them to rest in the promises, and assures 
them of the great privilege of believers, to "know 
that they have passed from death unto life." 

Nor does it prescribe the manner in which this as- 
surance is to be reached. It comes by faith, but 
w 7 hether in these or those circumstances it does not 
say. It may be in the midst of revival excitement, 
sudden, overwhelming, and often is. Or it may 
come quietly upon the soul, like the silent dawn, 
"shining more and more unto the perfect day." 

It sets great store by the practical evidences of 
persona] religion. " It will be shown by its fruits." 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 125 

A life of piety consistently maintained is accepted as 
a sign of the inward life. But the man is exhorted 
beyond that to seek and to enjoy communion with 
God and the witness of the Spirit of God with his 
spirit that he is a child of God. 

This clear, assured experience of religion is the 
mark of a true church — as really and essentially as 
the true doctrine and purity of life. It is the true 
power of the church. Without it we are but as 
sounding brass or the tinkling cymbal. 

The assurance urged among us is a present one. 
It dotes upon no recollections of a past experience 
and trusts to no anticipations of a dying miracle. It 
insists upon communion with God daily, hourly. 

It has ever been felt among us that the salvation 
of the soul is not a matter to be attained by any half- 
hearted effort. There must be full consecration. 
God must become supreme over the individual soul. 
"No man can serve two masters." All wordly 
affairs, all business and pleasure, must be subordi- 
nated to the will of God. The full soul must go out 
after God. He must be all in all. 

That it is our privilege to be made "perfect in love 
in this life" was distinctly held by Mr. Wesley. It 
is recognized in the Discipline, though not in the 
Articles of Faith. It is a living truth and a power 
in the church that can never be lost. Men may 



126 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

differ in regard to many particular points in connec- 
tion with it. They may vainly attempt the meta- 
physics of the spiritual life, and fall into many dis- 
putes thereby. They bewilder themselves with a 
thousand subtleties. There will remain much upon 
which they will not agree. Some ardent persons will 
fall into unhealthy states of sentiment, and into 
fanatical errors upon the subject. Yet it will ever 
be found that the highest spiritual type is that which 
grasps the promises with a joyful assurance that 
"the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin." 
There will be hypocrites and blind pharisees every 
here and there, arising among them, who, by incon- 
sistent courses, will cause the way of life to be evil 
spoken of. There will be many vain and boastful 
professions of such as will seem well only for a time. 
Yet the truest spirits in the church will yearn after 
and find the "fullness of the blessing of the gospel 
of Christ." 

We must never cease to urge a full consecration. 
And what we urge upon others we must ourselves 
exemplify. A pulpit, single minded and wholly given 
up to God, is at once the sign of the highest state of 
the spiritual life in the church, and the agency of its 
perpetuation. The ministry that is worldly, carnal, 
vain and selfish will never lead the church into the 
green pastures and by the still waters of perfect love. 



DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 127 

The flock can not be sent to pasture — it must be led. 

A sound experience and a complete and perpetual 
consecration in the ministry is a great safeguard of 
doctrinal purity. The simple-hearted believer who 
thinks only of pleasing God and enjoying his love 
will scarcely be inventing ingenious sophistries in 
doctrine. The fact of his own sin, and of salvation 
through Christ alone, received by faith, and con- 
sciously enjoyed through the witness of the Spirit, 
will be his great and all-engrossing theme. 

Nor will he mistake the relation of good works to 
the fact of salvation. That salvation is not obtained 
by good works, he will know by his own experience. 
He will know, also, that they are the fruit of faith, 
and that they enter into the life of the Christian as 
an essential part of it. The disposition and power 
to do good works are attributes of the new life. 
He will look to Christ with humble confidence as the 
only source of salvation, and at the same time rejoice 
to do his will, knowing that where the true spiritual 
life is, .good works are the necessary expression 
of it. 

Thus, doctrine and experience belong properly to 
each other. I do not say that a genuine experience 
will always bring with it correct doctrinal view T s in 
every particular, but I do say that it is wonderfully 
conservative of the essential doctrine. 



128 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 



In a number of the London Watchman containing 
some account of the recent session of the British 
Conference, I saw the statement, that there was not 
in any quarter any sign of departure from the Wes- 
leyan doctrine. The Methodist pulpit of Great 
Britain, it was affirmed, was perfectly sound. This 
was a most gratifying statement. The fact is, every- 
thing depends on doctrine, and just now, that such 
nationalists as Froude, who have the popular ear, 
are laying out the full measure of their power to 
disparage doctrine — to set at naught all dogma, — it 
is needful that we should study the situation, and see 
that all positive religious thought is not lost in the 
dim twilight of a speculative latitudinarianism. We 
must take heed to ourselves and to the doctrine. 

The very substance of all religion is contained in 
doctrine. This is inevitable from the nature of the 
case. The truths of doctrine are the very essence 
of religion. Of these it consists. This is what the 
Bible teaches. A man is, in religion, as he believes. 



DOCTKINAL INTEGEITY OF METHODISM. 129 

A false doctrinal system may go to the length of 
actually eviscerating the Christian faith. Indeed 
this has often been, and is in many cases now, the 
fact. Many individuals and churches hold a creed 
that takes the meaning out of all that is most vital 
and truest in the Christian religion. God has com- 
mitted the truth to us and we must maintain it. 

A man who holds the office of a preacher in the 
M. E. Church, South, is fully committed, upon sol- 
emn pledges, to its doctrine. Before obtaining li- 
cense he is examined upon doctrine in the Quarterly 
Conference 8 ; nor can he obtain license except the 
result of the examination be satisfactory. Upon 
being received into full connection, 6 'after solemn 
fasting and prayer," he pledges himself, in open 
Conference, "to conform to the discipline of the 
Church." In the Book of Discipline, Chapter vi, 
Section 2, Question 4 — Of the " Trial of a Traveling 
Preacher," we have this statute : 

•'What shall be done with those ministers or preachers who 
hold and disseminate, publicly or privately, doctrines which 
are contrary to our Articles of Religion ?" 

u Ans. Let the same process be observed as in cases of im- 
morality; but if the minister or preacher so offending do sol- 
emnly engage not to disseminate such erroneous doctrines in 
public or in private, he shall be borne with till his case can be 
laid before the next Annual Conference, which shall determine 
the matter." 

This statute classes false teaching with immorality, 



130 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

showing what value the Church attaches to purity of 
doctrine. 

The same law, in substance, holds in the case of 
local preachers. See Ch. vi, Sec. 5, Ques. 4. 

But the Church is not satisfied with a mere ne«;a- 
tive attitude on the part of her public teachers on 
the subject of doctrine. Eveiy Elder has promised 
in his ordination vow that he will " be ready with 
all faithful diligence to banish and drive away all 
erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God's 
word." 

The necessity of putting a standard of doctrine in 
the form of a written creed embracing the vital doc- 
trines of Christianity is evident from several condi- 
tions. 

Nothing is more lamentable than those mental 
phenomena which indicate a depraved condition. I 
sajr mental phenomena, using the word in its proper 
sense as referring to the intellectual faculties. Of 
those phenomena, perverse interpretations of Scrip- 
ture are among the most frequent and deplorable. We 
know that the monstrous doctrine of auricular con- 
fession is defended by the text which enjoins upon 
Christians to confess their faults one to another, and 
pray one for another. Universalists deny that the 
eternity of future punishments is taught in the Bible, 
whereas we know that the most formal and explicit 



DOCTKINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 131 

statement of the fact is contained in the Book. The 
ritualist professes to find baptismal regeneration 
there. One party fails to discover the doctrine of 
justification by faith, and another attempts to dis- 
prove by Scriptures even the Divinity of Christ. 

Now, certainly the vital truths are taught plainly 
enough in the Christian Scriptures. There is no 
doubt of that. No uneasiness is felt on that subject. 
But in a Church that has not published a formal 
statement of the great doctrines, the audacity of in- 
genious heretics will set forth and defend all sorts of 
most monstrous falsehoods and follies, and pretend 
Scripture as a foundation. The unlearned and un- 
stable will be bewildered by an elaborate network of 
sophistries. Every effort of the Church to silence 
such teachers would be a scene of debate and confu- 
sion involving endless logomachy, and distracting 
and rending the Church. 

When a man delights in ingenious distortions of 
the Word of God (as some do) it is amazing with 
what voluble confusion he can darken counsel. The 
Church, with experience of mischevious heresies, 
has forestalled their blighting presence by a plain 
and brief creed. It is necessary to her own peace. 
It prevents endless strifes, and, what is worse, deadly 
heresies, from gaining a footing in the Church. The 
experience of a creedless Church has been tried more 



132 DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY OF METHODISM. 

than once. The results are a sufficient warning for 
all time. Purity of doctrine, with peace, can not be 
secured except by the aid of a written creed, serv- 
ing as an authoritative standard of doctrine. 

I have s-aid that I do not apprehend a doctrinal 
cataclysm in the Methodist Church. Far from it. 
On the contrary, I rejoice in the integrity of doctrine 
which I see everywhere. Indeed, no preacher can 
teach heresy in the Church and, remain an honest 
man. He violates the most solemn obligations if he 
does so. The integrity of his own character is de- 
stroyed. 

The power of the Church is largely in a pure doc- 
trine. We can not afford to suffer deterioration at 
this point. God will be with us as we are true to 
his word. 

This is felt on all sides, and any tendency toward 
erroneous thought excites an alarm which gives an 
assurance of a most healthy tone prevalent among us. 



THE LIFE AND LABORS OF 

REV. E. M. MARVIN, D. D„ LL. D., 

ONE OF THE 

BISHOPS OF THE M. E. CHURCH, SOUTH, 

TOGETHER 

WITH A DISCUSSION OF SOME OF THE MORE IMPORTANT POINTS 
OF DOCTRINE AND PRINCIPLES OF CHUKCH POLITY 
TAUGHT BY THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCHES. 

BY EE V . D. K. M'ANALLY. 

ST. LOUIS: 
Logan D. Dameron, Agent, 
ADVOCATE PUBLISHING HOUSE. 
1878. 

This book will soon be finished, but will not be put upon the 
market for perhaps two months or more, for reasons given in 
the following notice from the editor in the Advocate of March 
27th, 1878. 

READ! 

When I began to write on the " Life and Labors of Bishop Marvin," I 
had no knowledge of any arrangements having been made with any 
party in regard to such a work, and only learned the fact on the 15th day 
of the present month, through the columns of the Nashville Advocate, 
bearing date of March 16th, it having, as it usually does, reached me one 
day in advance of its date. At that time (March 15th), three or four 
chapters of the work were in the hands of the printers, and some of 
these chapters had been put in type. 

The work has been carried < n since then until a large portion of it is now 
in type. One leading, if not the leading object, is, and has been from the 
first, to present and discuss some of the leading doctrines and some lead- 
ing characteristics of Church polity held a d pursued by the Church, as 
ihese were exemplified in the life and teachings of the Bishop. These 
will not spoil in the keeping; and now that, all may know that no un- 
worthy motive has prompted the writing, and no desire or wish to stand 
in the way of others, is entertained, and in view of the facts stated in the 
letter, we— that is the editor and the agent— do, of our own accord, and on 
our own motion, without conference or suggestion from any person 
whomsoever, here and now distinctly announce that, while we expect to 
carry the work to completion, we will withhold the publication thereof 
until the biographer and publisher selected by the family shall, in our 
sober judgment, have had full time to prepare their biography and place 
it upon the market, so that no one shall say we were in the way of any. 
We could have our work ready by the last of next month, but will with- 
hold publication as here stated. We will, for the time being, step aside, 
nor throw the least obstacle in the way of the biographer and publisher, 
nor of the sale of their book. 



A SERIES OF LECTURES ON TRANSUBSTANTIATION 

AND OTHER 

ERRORS OF THE PAPACY. 

BY E. M. MARVIN. 

ST. LOUIS : 
Logan D. Dameron, Agent. 
ADVOCATE PUBLISHING HOUSE. 
1878. 

592 Pages. Cloth. Price $2.00. 



Around the World. 

A Book of Travels Embracing the Entire Circuit of the Globe. 

BY REV. EUGENE R. HENDRIX, A. M, 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

Bishop E. M, MARVIN, D. D. 

ST. LOUIS: 

LOGAN D. DAMERON, AGENT. 

12mo. Cloth. 598 pages. Price $2.00. 

CRITICAL NOTICES OF " AROUND THE WORLD." 

" Racy and full of interest. We can promise a real treat in 
the perusal of this capital volume. This is one of the best 
books of travel we have seen." — Nashville Advocate. 

44 Admirably written. It makes fine progress and engages 
the attention of the reader steadily from the first page to the 
very end." — Bishop Keener. 

" His description of scenes are often very graphic and deeply 
impressive. * * * He who begins to read the book will 
hardly be willing to stop before he has reached the end." — 
Western Methodist, Memphis. 

44 A beautiful and rich volume of such varied matter as can 
but be a rich repast to the intelligent reader. The author has 
a wonderful talent for seeing." — Bichmond Advocate. 

44 A series of the most interesting letters we have ever read." 
— St. Louis Presbyterian. 

44 As a whole these letters are more than good — and they 
tell a great many things small and great which average readers 
wish to know." — N. Y. Methodist. 

44 A very interesting and instructive volume." — Sunday Mag- 
azine. 

44 A scholarly narrative. Notices things from a social as well 
as religious stand-point, and now and then leads us into con- 
siderable philosophy and fancy." — Central Baptist. 

44 A most excellent work." — Atlanta Daily Constitution. 

44 It is one of the most complete books, and at the same time 
fascinating to the reader, that we have ever seen." — The 
Christian. 

44 As between this book and Bishop Marvin's it is a question 
as between Florida and Louisiana oranges ; yet undecided which 
is better. ' ' — Bishop Mc Tyeire . 

" It is well written, strikingly fresh, sufficiently elaborate 

* * and throws much valuable light on many portions of 
Bible history. As a book of travels it is of rare value." — Cen- 
tral Methodist, Kentucky. 

44 The Author has few superiors as a letter- writer." — Raleigh 
(1ST. C.) Advocate. 



TO THE EAST BY WAY OF THE WEST, by the late Bishop 
E. M. Marvin, D. D. Illustrated. 606 Pages. Price - $2 00 

SERMONS. By E. M. Marvin, D. D., LL. D., one of the Bish- 
ops of the M. E. Church, South. 12mo, Muslin, pp. 552 - 2 00 

THE WORK OF CHRIST; OR, THE ATONEMENT, By 
Enoch M. Marvin, D. D., one of the Bishops of the M. E. 
Church, South. Cloth. Price - 60 

OUR CHILDREN ; By Atticus G. Haygood, D. D., Presi- 
dent of Emory College. 12mo, Muslin. 254 pages. Price, 150 

THE LIFE OF REY. WILLIAM GOFF CAPLES, by E. M. 
Marvin. 12mo. Cloth. 440 pages. - - 1 50 

SERMONS BY MISSOURI METHODIST PREACHERS, 
representing the Missouri, the St. Louis and West St. Louis 
Conferences of the M. E. Church, South. Compiled by Rev. 
G. W. Horn. 12mo. Cloth, 315 pages. Price, - 1 50 

A RELIGIOUS DISCUSSION between Rev. J. H. Prit- 
Chett, of the M. E. Church, South, and ELDER JOHN 
S. SWEENEY, of the Christian Church. 12mo, Cloth, 550 
pages. Price, ------ 150 

WEIGHTS AND WINGS, by Charles F. Deems, LL. D. 
Author of "The Home Altar," "Jesus," etc. 272 pages, beau- 
tifully bound in cloth. Price, - - - - 1 50 

THE PEOPLE'S COMMENTARY, including Brief Notes on the 
New Testament, with Copious References to Parallel and Illus- 
trative Scripture Passages, designed to aid Bible Students and 
common readers to understand the meaning of the Inspired 
Word, by Amos Binney, Author of the "Theological Com- 
pend." With an Introduction by Daniel Steele, D. D. 
12mo. Cloth, pp.706; price - - - - 3 00 

BAPTISM, INFANT, by A. T. Bledsoe, LL. D. 25 

BAPTISM, INFANT, by Rev. C. W. Miller, D. D., 16mo, cloth. 75 

BAPTISM, MODE OF, POINTS OF Controversy on, by Rev. C. 
W. Mi'ler, D. D., 16mo, cloth, 75 

BAPTISMAL REGENERATION by Rev. C. W. Miller, D. D., 
pamphlet. - ---25 

THE CHRISTIAN SACRAMENTS; or, Scriptural Exhibition 
of Nature, Mode and Subjects of Christian Baptism; also, A 
History of Immersion as a Religious Rite; also, A Catechism 
on the Design, Proper Use of and Subjects of the Lord's Sup- 
per; also, An Inquiry into the Geographical Location of the 
Wilderness of Judea. By Rev. O. Fisher, D. D., 8vo. cloth 2 00 

CUMMINS MOVEMENT, THE Bishop, by A. T. Bledsoe, LL. 
D., pamphlet - -- -- --25 

DANCING, AN ESSAY ON, by Rev. D. R. M'Anally, pamphlet 10 

GOD IN THE OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY, Sermon, by 
Bishop E. M. Marvin, pamphlet, - - 25 

McPHEETFRS, D. D., MEMOIRS of Rev. S. B., by Rev. John 
S. Grasty, 12mo, cloth, - - - - - 1 50 

M. E. CHURCHES, NORTH AND SOUTH. By Bishop E. M. 
Marvin, 16mo, cloth, 60 

PATTON, SAMUEL, LIFE AND TIMES of Rev. By D. R. 
M'Anally, D. D.,*12mo, cloth - - - -150 

Address orders to 

LOGAN D. JDAMERON", Agent, 
St. Louis. 



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